


The Prodigal Son

by Notesfromaclassroom



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Character Study, F/M, character backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 08:10:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 64,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notesfromaclassroom/pseuds/Notesfromaclassroom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was an aloof single-parent trying to raise his son. She was an excitable young teacher trying to pay her rent. In every way, they were wrong for each other.  A Sarek and Amanda love story, book-ended in each chapter by the ongoing tale of Sybok in the post-Nero apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alternate Realities

**The Prodigal Son**  
  
 **Chapter One: Alternate Realities**  
  
 **Disclaimer: I do this for free. What kind of idiot is that!**  
  
 _Somewhere in the future in another reality:_  
  
The alien shapeshifter reared overhead, the electrical energy crackling in the atmosphere. Sybok lifted his arms and took a step forward into the blistering heat and fire. This was suicide.  
  
An emotional choice. And the logical one.  
  
The thought made him smile.  
  
"Let me share your pain," he said, moving closer.  
  
And then, "Run!"  
  
Jim Kirk didn't have to be told twice.  
  
x  
  
 _The present day in this reality:_  
  
This is why time travel should be discouraged. _This_. The temptation to make things right that were wrong before, the lure of using his knowledge of the future to offer redemption in the present.  
  
Technically, of course, he isn't a time traveler. The universe he had lived in, died in, and was reborn in is continuing on somewhere else, without him.  
  
Spock tilts his head and considers. Time travel might be fraught with dangers, might impose temporal contraints on those who slip backward or forward—but traveling to an alternate reality? What he knows in his own universe may not apply in this one.  
  
Are his hands tied here as well?  
  
In some ways, yes. Here he goes by Selek, leaving his birth name, the one he still hears his family and friends call him in his infrequent dreams, to a counterpart whose life choices both echo his own and depart from them radically.  
  
Such as this, the young woman answering the door.  
  
"Ambassador!" she says, and Spock—Selek—lifts his hand in an approximation of a human greeting.  
  
"Lieutenant," he says. "May I come in?"  
  
The quarters she shares with Spock— _her_ Spock—are larger than the ones he recalls from his own days on the _Enterprise_. The door from the corridor opens into a sitting room with a built in sofa and a movable chair tucked beneath a desk recessed into the wall. With a practiced motion Lieutenant Uhura swivels the chair around and offers it to him.  
  
"I apologize for the intrusion," he says, settling carefully into the chair. The room, he notes, is agreeably warm, unlike most other areas of the ship. Spock's preference, no doubt, and the lieutenant's concession to his comfort. That bodes well.  
  
"I wasn't aware you were aboard," Lt. Uhura says, and Selek inclines his head.  
  
"A last minute decision," he says. "I will not be long—just long enough to speak to Spock before you leave orbit."  
  
It still feels odd to refer to his counterpart this way, and even odder seeing him emerge from the bedroom, adjusting the hem of his science blues.  
  
"Should I leave you two alone?" Lieutenant Uhura says, making a move toward the door. Even as he says, "That is not necessary," he hears Spock say, "No."  
  
At least they are in accord for now.  
  
The lieutenant perches on the edge of the small sofa and smoothes her hand across the spot beside her, an invitation—no, a direction—for Spock to sit there. Selek feels one corner of his mouth quirk up.  
  
"I am sorry that we have not had more time to speak since I returned from Romulus," he says. Spock says nothing—which doesn't surprise Selek. After all, Spock doesn't hide his disapproval of Selek's attempts to engage the Romulan underground in efforts at reunification. Dangerous and delusional, the young man said the last time they spoke about it.  
  
Which is one reason Selek hesitates now to bring up something even more dangerous and delusional.  
  
"We have not had occasion," he says, "to speak of Sybok."  
  
Spock comes as close to flinching as possible without actually doing so. A painful subject, then. Another way they are in accord.  
  
"You are in contact with him?" Selek asks, and Spock blinks once, as if checking some internal monitor.  
  
"I am not," he says simply, and Selek nods.  
  
"But you know where he is."  
  
Again Spock blinks before answering.  
  
"No, I have not spoken to him since I was a child."  
  
"And I assume Sarek does not know where he is."  
  
"You would need to ask him."  
  
Pressing his hands on his knees, Selek prepares to rise.  
  
"Then you cannot help me," he says.  
  
"The _V'tosh ka'tur_ ," Spock says simply, and Selek sits back down slowly.  
  
"So," the elderly Vulcan says, letting a measure of weariness creep into his tone. "He is with them here as well."  
  
"The last time—"  
  
From the sofa, Spock starts and then stops abruptly, dropping his eyes. Lieutenant Uhura puts her hand on his arm and he looks up and says, "The last time my mother spoke of him, she said she believed he was traveling with a group of the _V'tosh ka'tur_. I never heard anything more."  
  
"What exactly are these _V'tosh ka'tur_?" the lieutenant asks, and although she is looking at Spock, Selek answers.  
  
"As you might surmise from their name, they are Vulcans who prefer emotion over reason when making decisions. In their strictest sects, they reject logic outright and seek experiences which they believe will give them the greatest emotional value."  
  
"I've never heard of them," she says, and Selek says, "They have been outcasts from mainstream Vulcan society. As you can imagine, their way of life brings them in conflict with traditional practices. Until now, at any rate."  
  
"What do you mean?" Spock says.  
  
Selek takes a breath and lets it out slowly.  
  
"The Vulcan elders have decided," he says, "that in light of recent events, the _V'tosh ka'tur_ should be invited to return and integrate into Vulcan society."  
  
"They will not want to," Spock says swiftly, and Selek raises one eyebrow.  
  
"Perhaps. Two years ago I would have agreed with you. Now I'm not so sure. Our mutual survival is in question."  
  
"What does this have to do with Spock?"  
  
Lieutenant Uhura's tone is both challenging and protective, which is understandable. The last time Selek had asked Spock for help, it had almost cost them both their lives on a distant Romulan outpost. Running the fingers of his right hand along his jaw, Selek says, "Nothing, if Sarek knows where Sybok is. Otherwise, Spock, I will need your help in locating him."  
  
"As I indicated, I have not spoken to him since I was a child."  
  
"But you may know something that can serve as a clue to his current whereabouts."  
  
"That seems unlikely."  
  
"Even so," Selek says, rising, "what you know—or what you can discover—may prove beneficial."  
  
Immediately he senses Spock's skepticism, but he has no other choice. Since returning from Romulus, Selek has been at cross-purposes often with the elders in the High Council. Only his concern about what might happen to Sybok - his knowledge of what did happen to Sybok in another reality - makes him cooperate.  
  
Finding any _V'tosh ka'tur_ who might want to settle is his idea of a futile quest. From what he suspects, not many will want to do so—assuming, of course, that they are like the _V'tosh ka'tur_ of his universe.  
  
And if they are, he doubts anyone will want Sybok to return.  
  
xx  
  
 _In the not-so-distant past before the realities diverged:_  
  
"The first applicant is here," Sarek's secretary, T'Lin, said. Standing in the doorway of his office, she didn't bother to hide her disdain. Not for him, of course—that would have been a serious breach of protocol and decorum—but for the idea that the Vulcan embassy needed a human cultural attaché. Human. Sarek was no fool. He knew he was a rarity in thinking that the humans might actually have something valuable to teach Vulcans.  
  
Like how to prepare for a dinner engagement. Only last week Ambassador Somak had apparently offended his human hosts at the World Wildlife Organization conference by assuming that the catered meal included rare species of animals and berating them publicly for it.  
  
"A natural mistake," the ambassador said later, "occasioned by the name of the organization. Who could have known that the group is devoted to animal preservation?"  
  
Practicing his diplomacy, Sarek did not say what came to mind—that anyone should have known, if he had bothered to check beforehand.  
  
The ambassador's gaffe wasn't the first one, but it did catch the attention of the High Council back on Vulcan. When the expected reprimand came, Sarek suggested hiring a human intermediary—a cultural attaché—as a preventive measure against any future errors.  
  
"Merely precautionary," he said, hoping to smooth the ambassador's ruffled feathers. An interesting phrase he had picked up from the local holovids—was he using it correctly in this situation? That's something else a cultural attaché could do, refine his use of Standard idioms.  
  
"You said the first applicant is here. There is more than one?" he asked, and T'Lin sniffed.  
  
"No others are scheduled," she said, pulling her floor length robe around her, like someone fending off a chill.  
  
"Today, you mean."  
  
"At all. No one else has applied."  
  
Sarek folded his hands in front of him on his desk and took a moment before answering.  
  
"Then this applicant is technically not the first but the only."  
  
At once he was ashamed of teasing his secretary this way. She drew up her chin and gave him a withering glance.  
  
"Shall I show her in?" she said after a moment, and Sarek shook his head.  
  
"First I require another chair for this office," he said, motioning to the empty space in front of his desk. "Could you—"  
  
"I will see what I can do," T'Lin said, sniffing again—this time, Sarek knew, at the idea that a human needed to sit during an interview. She walked down the hallway with more noise than necessary, returning soon with a lightweight plastic chair from the outdoor eating area.  
  
"Shall I send her now?"  
  
Sarek shook his head again. "Give me three minutes to finish this correspondence and then show her in."  
  
At once T'Lin's expression softened a fraction. Of course, his secretary would be privy to the contents of the letter he had received that morning, would probably be able to anticipate his reply. Still, it was unnerving to have his private business exposed this way.  
  
Not that he was ashamed of it—or of Sybok. It was not his choice, after all, to live apart from his son.  
  
He had known as soon as he received it that the note was from Sybok's grandmother, T'Ria. Anyone else would have used an honorific in the address—Adjutant Sarek or even Junior Ambassador Sarek. That T'Ria had sent the note to "Sarek, Vulcan Embassy, Earth," was an intentional slight.  
  
Intellectually he understood her anger. She blamed him for her daughter's death—or at least, for her daughter's unhappiness before her death. He had been unhappy as well, bonded to a woman with whom he had little in common.  
  
T'Ria counted her family among the Vulcan elite and had only reluctantly approved T'Lahn's _kan'telan_ to Sarek. T'Lahn herself seemed indifferent to her mother's emphasis on family breeding and heritage. Instead, she counted among her closest associates people Sarek had difficulty understanding—people who spent their time not in contemplation or study but in risk-taking designed to elicit strong emotions such as fear or exhilaration. Life-threatening physical activities, indulgences in food and drink, extreme mental practices that altered consciousness and sometimes put their health in danger—T'Lahn's _V'tosh ka'tur_ associates admitted to these and more.  
  
As disturbing as these activities were, what concerned Sarek more was the _V'tosh ka'tur's_ scorn for logic, their willfully pitting emotion against rational thought and choosing, again and again, their feelings as their rationale for doing something.  
  
When he felt the stirrings of his first _pon farr_ and sought out T'Lahn, she refused to accompany him to his family's ancestral place of _koon'ut kal'i'fee,_ causing him a few moments of panic until she led him to her bed.  
  
"I am not interested in marriage," she said, running her fingers across his fevered brow, but by then he didn't care.  
  
Weeks later when she told him that she was pregnant with his child, he asked her again to marry him but she refused.  
  
"I was bonded against my will," she said, "but no one can force me to marry against my will."  
  
Nor was she interested in sharing a home with him. Instead she continued to live with her mother, even after Sybok was born, coming and going as she pleased, apparently, and spending much of her time with the _V'tosh ka'tur._ Sarek had begun to consider resorting to the courts for more access to his son when T'Ria called him one day in a fury, telling him that T'Lahn had been found dead.  
  
"If you had been there for her," T'Ria said, "she would not have done this."  
  
What exactly T'Lahn had done was never made clear to him.  
  
When Sybok was three years old and still living with his grandmother, Sarek's legal counsel advised him that as an unmarried parent, he had few rights to his child. Shortly afterwards, he accepted a promotion as Ambassador Somak's adjutant and headed to a new posting on Earth.  
  
Now his infrequent trips home always included a great deal of negotiating beforehand with T'Ria for time to visit with Sybok. Her latest letter, he knew, would be a list of conditions and other roadblocks for him to stumble through, maddening if he let them. He opened the letter on his digital notebook and scanned it as T'Lin's footfalls grew louder in the hall.  
  
 _I plan to be off-planet at the time of your arrival. Please make other arrangements._  
  
Sarek felt his face flush. T'Ria's letter was deliberately imprecise—provocative, really, in what it did not say. She planned to be off planet? Did she mean that she was arranging her travel to coincide when Sarek would be home so that he would not be able to see Sybok?  
  
Was Sybok even going to be with her? If she was leaving him with other caregivers while she was away, couldn't Sarek visit with Sybok without T'Ria present? And if not, why not?  
  
And those other arrangements? If he made other arrangements, would she plan to be off-planet then, too?  
  
Not for the first time did Sarek rail against the imprecision of words. How easy it was to mislead someone this way.  
  
He glanced up as T'Lin paused in the doorway. Behind her he saw a blur of color and motion. The applicant, of course. He took a breath and tried to regain a measure of control.  
  
There was no use in trying to answer T'Ria right now—he was far too angry. The words swirled in front of his eyes.  
  
He heard the chair creak and T'Lin's footsteps receding. Time to get on with it.  
  
"How well do you understand Standard?" he said as he looked up. The young woman sitting awkwardly in the chair jumped visibly. Then the corners of her eyes crinkled and she laughed.  
  
"I've been speaking it all my life!" she said, still smiling.  
  
Sarek had noted before the complexities of human laughter, the way it altered not only facial features but posture and breathing. The woman sitting before him tipped her head to the side, her small, white teeth flashing as she emitted a two-toned explosive sound—not unpleasant—and bent slightly at the waist. Her fingers, long and tapered, fluttered as she reached up and smoothed her hair away from her face. A nervous habit?  
  
He followed the motion of her hands and realized with a start that she was in fact very young—newly adult, most likely, or nearly so. She wore her hair uncovered the way most humans in San Francisco did despite the damp and cold, and though it was pulled back loosely and fell to her shoulders, Sarek could see that it was dark and slightly wavy. Her eyes were dark, too, fringed by thick lashes and framed by brows that at the moment were high and arched.  
  
As she laughed she reached around with one hand and tugged off the sweater she was wearing, the sheen on her forehead suggesting that she was overly warm. Human body temperature was several degrees cooler than Vulcan—would that be an issue if she worked here? He looked at her closely for other signs of heat distress.  
  
The expression on her face flickered and her laughter died.  
  
"I'm a native speaker, if that's what you mean," she said, stammering.  
  
The lightweight plastic chair creaked as she shifted in it, sitting up straighter. Anxiety? Because she was forced to answer a question? Sarek began to feel anxiety of his own—that this woman was far too young and inexperienced to work effectively as a cultural attaché. And what had T'Lin said? That there were no other applicants?  
  
"How versed are you on Terran traditions and customs?"  
  
To Sarek's astonishment, his question turned up the corners of the woman's mouth and she laughed again.  
  
"I know a few!" she said.  
  
That was alarming. A cultural attaché with such limited knowledge was useless.  
  
Clearly this wasn't going to work out.  
  
"Only a few?" he said. "Then you may not be suitable."  
  
1640 Earth time. If he hurried, he could make a call to his human contact who had arranged this interview, explain the unsuitability of this applicant and urge him to find someone else.  
  
The young woman's dark eyes grew round and he heard her intake of breath.  
  
"I was only joking!" she said, twisting her sweater in her hands. "I'm very familiar…with Terran customs and traditions."  
  
A joke. Something said with a humorous intention. That put things in a different perspective. The laughter, the fidgeting—all part of the presentation known as a joke.  
  
On second thought, the young woman was actually quite appealing, in a human sort of way.  
  
Sarek realized that he was staring.  
  
"Your references seem to be in order," he said abruptly, pulling his eyes back to his notebook. "I am only the adjutant, but I believe the ambassador will approve your hiring. I will contact you in either case."  
  
The change in her mood was almost palpable. She smiled and for one shocking moment, Sarek thought she might be about to extend her hand to him.  
  
"Oh!" she said, standing up so quickly that her chair teetered backward and fell over. Blushing furiously, she leaned down and righted it.  
  
"Thank you, Mr.—"  
  
"Sarek," he said, watching her struggle around the skittery chair. She nodded at him quickly and looked back once more as she left the room.  
  
And only then did he realize that he had never spoken her name. He looked down at his notebook.  
  
 _Amanda Grayson._  
  
 **A/N: Aiyee! I feel like I'm walking a tightrope without a net! If you've read any of my other Star Trek stories, you know I've littered them with bits and pieces of stories about Sarek and Amanda and Sybok. For quite some time now I've wanted to gather up all those orphaned stories and stitch them together.**  
  
 **I won't retell those stories exactly as I've already told them—but I may pull out bits of them and imagine from another character's POV.**  
  
 **As for Sybok, I have a true confession. My least favorite movie in the entire Star Trek franchise is Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. And one of my least favorite characters is Sybok. An estranged half-brother seems like too important a part of Spock's history for him to never have mentioned.**  
  
 **That said, however, I find the challenge of making Sybok believable (and showing how his history with Sarek, Amanda, and even lil' Spock explains his present day actions) rather exciting.**  
  
 **But then, so is walking a tightrope without a net (or so I've heard!)**  
  
  
  



	2. Moment

**Chapter Two: Moment**

**Disclaimer: Not my characters; just my mischief.  
**

The moment she steps into the room, Nyota knows that Spock isn't inside.

When they first decided to make her quarters their default living area, Spock had set the climate controls to scan for their different biometric signatures. Whenever she enters the room, she can hear the air handler click on and the chiller start up. When he is alone, the room stays toasty warm.

The room is cool and comfortable already—which means that he hasn't been here for some time.

Even without the evidence of the temperature, she doesn't sense him here—doesn't feel the subtle strengthening of their bond that alerts her to his physical presence.

If she tries, she can reach out to him now, wherever he is—but she hesitates to do so. If he's working she will interrupt him.

And if he's not working—

She's almost certain he's not working. The odds are high that he's in his own quarters, left bare except for his _asenoi_ and a meditation stone in one corner.

With a sigh she turns around and heads to the mess hall. After she gets something for herself, she can choose a meal and take it to him.

Not that he'll eat it. She can count on one hand the number of meals she knows he's eaten in the past week.

The mess hall is almost empty this time of the shift, and at first Nyota is resigned to eating alone. However, as she makes her selection of salads, she sees Leonard McCoy hunkered over a padd he has propped up on the table in the far corner. When she slides into the chair opposite, he looks up and grins.

"Looky here," he says. "Haven't seen you in forever."

"You know where to find me," Nyota says, returning his grin and lifting a slice of tomato with her fork.

"Yeah, maybe," the doctor says, "but you seem pretty busy these days. Pretty _occupied."_

Taking a sip from the coffee mug at his hand, he says, "Where is he anyway?"

For a moment she considers feigning ignorance, but Leonard McCoy has been a friend since her second year at the Academy—and not just a friend but a poker buddy. He already knows all her bluffs.

"I'm not sure," she says, blowing out a breath. "I think he's meditating."

"Huh!" McCoy says. "Seems to do that a lot lately."

She sighs again and says, "I know. I think he's trying to…I don't know…reach out to his brother somehow. See if he can find him."

"With some of that Vulcan mumbo-jumbo," McCoy says, and Nyota knows he expects her to come to Spock's defense. Instead she spears another piece of tomato—fiercely—and shoots him a glare.

"Well, anyway," McCoy says, looking meaningfully at this watch and scooting back his chair, "if I can help, let me know."

"Actually," she says, "you can."

Standing up and beckoning him to the food server, she punches in the code for another salad and places it on a tray.

"Take this to him and make sure he eats it."

"Oh, no! He'll bite my head off! And besides, I'm a doctor, not a waiter!"

"Then tell him," Nyota says, one finger pressing the center of McCoy's chest, the other pressing the tray into his hand, "that it's doctor's orders."

X

Sarek stepped aboard the shuttle at the transport hub in the capital city of Shi'Kahr and felt a wave of annoyance. Almost every seat was occupied, the vast majority by humans. Attendees returning to Earth after some large conference on Vulcan, no doubt. The annual gathering of Federation Xenoengineers, perhaps, or a medical forum he recalled seeing advertised.

If he had known, he would have scheduled his travel for another day.

Suppressing a sigh, Sarek lifted his travel case up and piloted his way down the narrow aisle to his assigned place—which to his dismay was a center seat between two already-settled human females. He stood for a moment waiting for the nearest woman on the aisle to look up.

Instead, she continued scanning her padd in her hand. From the corner of his eye, Sarek saw another passenger coming in his direction down the aisle.

"Excuse me," he said. There. Now he'd used half of the human niceties he had learned in the two years since he took the embassy post on Earth.

The woman sitting on the aisle glanced up, and then visibly startled, blinked.

"Is this your seat?"

Why else, indeed, would he be standing here, bag in hand, if the seat was not his? Like so many things that humans said, this comment was self-evident and did not require an answer. Sarek leveled his gaze and waited.

Another beat and finally the woman stood up and awkwardly stepped into the aisle. With a quick motion, Sarek slipped his travel case into the drawer under his seat and sat down, careful to keep his arms tucked to his side.

With an audible huff, his seatmate on the aisle sat down, too. Bracing himself, Sarek waited for her to comment further, but to his relief, she picked up her padd and started reading again.

"Your first time to Earth?"

His other seatmate sitting next to the shuttle window was an older woman wearing some sort of decorative shawl impractical for traveling—a tourist, then, or someone on holiday rather than an engineer or physician going home after a conference. Sarek closed his eyes briefly and weighed the odds that he would be able to spend the rest of the flight in silent contemplation. Low, apparently. In his experience, humans who traveled for pleasure were more likely to initiate conversations and less likely to be dissuaded from continuing them.

"No," he said, folding his hands and leaning his head against the seat, a posture he often noted in humans who preferred silence. The woman in the window seat seemed oblivious.

"Do you go there often?" she asked, and again Sarek repressed a sigh.

"Excuse me," he said, tilting his head until he could look the woman in the eye, "but I am not interested in having a personal conversation with you."

Leaning back, he caught a glimpse of her face. Her brows were knit together, her eyes narrowed, her mouth a thin line.

He'd angered her. Casting about in his mind, he recalled the only other human nicety he knew—one he seemed to use with increasing frequency.

"I apologize," he said before he leaned away and shut his eyes.

If he was normally disinclined to engage in idle chatter with a stranger, today Sarek was especially averse. The short trip to Vulcan had been unplanned—or more precisely, less planned than he would have liked—a week's visit with Sybok before T'Ria could take him off-planet for an extended stay with her son and daughter-in-law working on a Narian outpost.

As it was, Sarek had had little time to prepare—had, in fact, petitioned Ambassador Somak personally for leave because of the short notice. Although the ambassador had granted it immediately and without reservation, Sarek felt at a disadvantage somehow, as if his career was being compromised.

His time with Sybok was awkward, T'Ria hovering in the background as he tried to talk to his son. Barely five in Terran years, Sybok was stocky, his arms and legs sturdy. His dark hair was like Sarek's, slightly wavy, but his eyes were his mother's—light brown and expressive.

The little boy watched his father warily as they walked in T'Ria's garden or ate a midday meal at her kitchen table.

"You have preferences in your studies?" Sarek asked the second day as they sat across from each other sharing afternoon tea. Sybok looked down and shook his head.

"His tutors say he is gifted in mathematics," T'Ria said, pouring more tea for Sarek—reluctantly, he thought. She returned the pot to the hob on the counter before sitting next to her grandson. "Tell your father about your project."

Darting a glance at Sarek, Sybok said, "It is not much. I am exploring patterns in Chebyshev polynomials."

This was unexpected in a child so young. Could Sybok be a prodigy? Sarek slid his fingers along the glaze of the mug and willed himself not to show his pride.

"What patterns did you note in the coefficients?" he asked, pretending a nonchalance he did not feel. "Did you look at the cosines, too?" Instead of answering, Sybok looked up at T'Ria.

"Go," she said. "Get your project to show your father."

Slipping out of his chair, Sybok exited the kitchen.

"I will send him a trigonometric graphing program," Sarek said, his face slightly flushed. "He will be able to do the derivatives then—"

"Sybok," T'Ria said, lifting her tea mug to her lips, "requires nothing from you. I have taken care of his needs. As you see, he is doing well in your absence."

It was a dismissal in more ways than one.

As the shuttle began its descent, Sarek opened his eyes and made a mental list of what he had to do as soon as he reached the embassy compound. His secretary T'Lin would have taken care of the routine correspondence. If any emergencies had arisen, Savil, the other junior ambassador, would have alerted him.

That left the meeting with the Arkan delegation, then. At 2100 tonight, 47 Federation officials would arrive at the Vulcan embassy to meet and greet the newest charter signatories, three representatives from the Arkos star cluster. This was the kind of meeting that could be what humans called a _gold mine_ , Sarek thought.

Or perhaps the phrase was _land mine_. Just the kind of semantic question to ask the cultural attaché.

That thought added another bullet to the list: call the applicant and officially hire her.

Assuming, of course, that she hadn't taken other employment in the two weeks since he'd interviewed her. He should have called her right after her interview. If he hadn't had to leave for Vulcan soon afterwards—

It was useless to feel regret, and illogical, too, to regret what could not be helped or altered.

Taking a deep breath, Sarek looked out the window as the shuttle banked sharply. The late afternoon fog was already rolling in, partially obscuring the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Do you mind?" the woman next to the window said, and he blinked and sat back.

By the time the shuttle landed and Sarek found ground transportation to carry him the rest of the way to the embassy, the sun had slipped below the horizon and the evening wind had picked up. Shivering as he passed the security desk, he stopped at the small kitchen area at the end of the hallway and made a cup of tea before unlocking his office door and checking his messages.

The sky was completely dark when he finally sorted through his notes and picked up his comm.

"Hello?"

With an audible click, the connection opened, but only to audio. The voice on the other end was slightly muffled, as if the speaker was hastily swallowing something, but Sarek recognized Amanda Grayson immediately: the same intentional fearlessness in her tone, like someone trying to talk herself into being courageous.

A fanciful notion, he thought, surprised at himself. He wasn't usually given to such _flights of fancy_ —if that was, indeed, the term for what he was doing.

The stress of the journey catching up with him, no doubt. He sat up straighter in his chair.

"Your services are required," he said. Straightforward, professional. He could tick this task off his list of things to do before the guests arrived.

Silence, and then he heard Ms. Grayson say, "Mr. Sarek?"

Sarek felt a flash of alarm. Unlike some of his colleagues, he made a point to practice his Standard regularly and never spoke anything else with his human counterparts on the Federation staff. His pronunciation, he felt certain, was accurate and clear. Perhaps he spoke too softly, or in a register difficult for Ms. Grayson to hear?

"I apologize," Sarek said. He had an unwanted flashback of himself offering the same words to the woman he offended on the shuttle. "I have been told that human hearing is not as acute as Vulcan."

To his astonishment, Ms. Grayson's next words were surprisingly forceful. "I recognize your voice!" she said. "But it is polite to identify yourself before you start speaking!"

Now he had offended _her_ , either by assuming that her hearing was deficient or by neglecting some human conversation protocols. Human hearing _was_ inferior to Vulcan, so any offense she might have taken at his statement of fact would be…illogical.

Therefore he must have violated a key element when he omitted stating his name at the outset of their conversation.

"A Terran custom," he mused. One that was species-wide, language specific, or cultural? Another gold mine—or land mine—to navigate. "Fortunately I have you as my teacher. Your task will be to help me avoid future cultural misunderstandings."

A faint puff of air preceded Ms. Grayson's next words.

"I haven't agreed to take the job! It is also a Terran custom to ask."

That she might not accept the job had not occurred to him. Why would someone apply for a job unless she intended to take it if it were offered?

"I see," Sarek said, trying to mask his confusion. "Ms. Grayson, we are offering you a position as cultural aide. Do you accept?"

"When do you need an answer?"

This, too, was a surprise. Did humans routinely apply for jobs before they actually needed them?

"At once," Sarek said. He heard her take a breath.

"Very well," she said. "I accept. When do I start?"

Sarek allowed himself to feel a wash of relief that he wouldn't have to start all over with a new applicant.

"2100 hours," he said, glancing down at his padd to the next bullet on his list.

_Check with the caterer._

"You mean—tonight? 2100 tonight?"

The surprise in her tone made him look back up.

"I can send a flitter for you," Sarek said. "The Vulcan delegation is hosting a reception for the Arkan Convention at our embassy. Because some of the attendees are Terran, Ambassador Somak felt that having a human host might…prevent…a repeat of certain unintentional missteps."

"But it's late! And I'm sitting here in my pajamas getting ready for bed—"

Without meaning to, Sarek tried to visualize what she was describing. He pictured her as he had seen her before, her dark, wavy hair pinned back from her face, her shoulders bare as she tugged her arms free of her sweater.

"Of course," she said, her words punctuated with little hiccups. _A form of laughter?_ "I can change. Give me some time to get ready."

"The driver will call for you in ten minutes."

"Better make it fifteen," she said, and he snapped his comm shut, relieved that he could finally move on to the rest of his list.

He was occupied when she arrived and didn't have a chance to speak to her until later, when he noticed her suddenly at his elbow as he stood with a small group of Federation representatives, most of whom he had not met before. The center of attention was one of the Arkans, an exceptionally tall humanoid who had to bend over to make eye contact with the other guests.

"Is the weather always so disagreeable?" the Arkan said, and Sarek felt Ms. Grayson shift slightly.

"Indeed," the other junior ambassador said. "It is unfortunate that the Federation is headquartered on Earth. The climate on Vulcan is far more comfortable. Of the 743 days that I have been posted here, the ambient temperature has risen above 80 degrees Fahrenheit twice."

"Just in San Francisco!"

This from Ms. Grayson, whose cheeks, Sarek noted, were turning pink.

"I mean," she stammered, "Earth's a pretty big planet. We have lots of ecosystems. The weather here in San Francisco is actually rather unusual. Only four other places on Earth have the same kind of weather—"

She stumbled to a halt and darted a glance at Sarek.

 _An apology?_ An appeal.

He cleared his throat and said, "Yes. That is correct. Western-facing coastlines cooled by prevailing winds, leading to mild winters and dry summers. Mediterranean tropical subclimate, and rare, as Ms. Grayson indicated."

Ms. Grayson smiled at the group in front of her.

"In fact," she said, "no matter what sort of climate you prefer, you can probably find it on Earth. Just a few minutes away by hovercar and you can be in the snow of the mountains or the heat of the desert. I mean…if you wanted to—"

Again she stumbled to a stop. Savil and the two other Vulcans in the group were standing motionless, their expressions not masking their mild disapproval. The humans in the group, on the other hand, looked…cheerful. Or pleased. Because Ms. Grayson had spoken favorably about their home world, undoubtedly, appealing to their pride.

Illogical, really, to feel pride over things that they didn't control.

The Arkan representative bobbed his head and leaned closer to Ms. Grayson.

"Interesting," he said. "I may take your suggestion before I return home. You are the wife of Adjutant Sarek?"

"Ms. Grayson," Sarek said swiftly, "is the cultural attaché for the Vulcan embassy."

The group drifted to other parts of the room shortly after that and Sarek's time was taken up in an extended conversation with a Starfleet admiral. Once he caught a glimpse of Ms. Grayson accepting a beverage from a human male. Another time he saw her talking with unusual enthusiasm to the other two Arkans.

As the guests began to depart, Sarek overheard her trilling laughter from the corner of the room and turned to see her standing beside Savil at the doorway.

"It is time for you to leave," Sarek heard Savil say to someone, and Ms. Grayson added, "What the junior ambassador means is _thank you for coming_."

Savil looked decidedly annoyed. Sarek felt the corner of his mouth quirk up.

"If you are ready to leave," he told her as the last few people gathered their outerwear and headed to the door, "I will have the driver take you home."

Ms. Grayson looked up at him and smiled, something she seemed to do frequently and with little provocation. Unless, of course, she had found pleasure in the evening. That seemed unlikely so he asked her.

"Oh, yes!" she said. "It was fun! I mean, after a difficult start. I didn't mean to blurt out that way—you know, about the weather. I hope you didn't mind."

She laughed again and said, "Imagine that. The weather! The safest topic in any conversation, and I almost blew it."

The weather patterns on Earth were highly complex and only partly understood by scientists who specialized in their study. Yet apparently this was an ordinary topic for human conversation. Sarek's confusion must have shown.

"I mean," Ms. Grayson said, her smile disappearing, "it turned out okay, didn't it?"

"If you are asking if your work tonight was a success," Sarek said, looking over her head at the few Vulcans remaining, "then I believe so. I do not see the embassy driver. He may be occupied taking another guest home. If you do not object, you can have me. I can take you in my flitter."

Her eyes widened a fraction and for a moment Sarek thought she might be about to object.

"I am experienced," he said to reassure her. "I've done this in the flitter before." To his astonishment, she burst out laughing.

"I understand that you might question my skills or ability," he said, aware that one of the embassy staff was staring from across the room. "But I am well trained."

Following his glance, Ms. Grayson lifted her hands and tried to muffle her laughter.

"I'm…I'm sorry…Mr. Sarek," she said, giving the same little hiccups he had heard earlier over the comm. "It's just that…when you said—"

And she broke into peals of laughter again.

This was beyond mortifying. He felt a wave of annoyance.

Almost at once she took a deep breath and her expression grew serious.

"I apologize," she said, "if I embarrassed you. The late hour—"

She waved her hands as if that somehow helped explain her meaning.

Except for simple directions— _turn at the next left; you can pull over here_ —she was quiet for most of the flitter ride. In the close darkness Sarek hazarded a glance at her once, twice, and saw a ghost of her earlier smile flicker across her expression.

"Something amuses you," he said, and she turned quickly to look at him, her eyes bright.

"I was thinking about how you saved me," she said, "when I scolded your colleagues about the weather!"

"You were scolding them?"

"Well, a little. I shouldn't have said anything."

She shrugged—an interesting motion that made her appear oddly vulnerable. Or younger. Or more attractive, the curve of her ear catching the light from outside. He peered closely at her in the dark and tried to decide which it was.

Breaking the silence after a moment, he said, "The Arkan representative did not seem to object."

"He was too busy feeling sorry for you," she replied, the fingers of one hand brushing a loose tendril of hair out of her face. "Wasn't that funny how he assumed I was your wife?"

"Indeed. Extremely odd. I am not married, though the representative could not have known that," Sarek said. He saw that Ms. Grayson's lips were parted slightly, as if he had interrupted something she was about to say. He waited a moment before continuing.

"Even so," he said, "I do not understand his confusion. Surely he noticed that you are human."

Ms. Grayson closed her mouth abruptly, and a moment later she shivered.

"You are cold," Sarek said, recalling a treatise he had read on human physiology.

"No," Ms. Grayson said so quickly that Sarek had the feeling that he had offended her somehow, that from one moment to the next something had changed or been lost. "Not at all. I'm a human, remember? We like this kind of weather."

And with that, she opened the door of the flitter and walked away without a backward glance.

X X

"Father, do you want something to eat?"

Sybok opens his eyes. As he expects, Davara is squatting down a few meters in front of him, staring out from under a roughly woven cowl to protect her nose and mouth from the dust storms that whip across the desert in the late afternoons.

Glancing around, Sybok sees that the day is, in fact, almost gone—the light in the cave has that peculiar greenish cast just before the sun sets.

"Your mother?" he says, his voice creaky and dry.

"She's back," Davara says, resting one knee on the ground. "She sent me for you."

Like her mother, Davara has the high cheekbones and olive skin of the majority of Rihannsu. In this light her eyes are as black as her hair, and except for her slighter build and shorter stature, she could be mistaken for a full-grown adult.

Sybok throws back his head and stretches his arms out before standing up slowly.

"Did you hear it?" Davara asks. He shakes his head.

"Not today," he says. He takes a step forward and lets his hand settle on Davara's shoulder. Turning, she heads toward the mouth of the cave and he follows her, feeling the muscles of her shoulder ripple under the palm of his hand.

He knows he is worrying her—and Tri'eska, as well—but there is no help for it. He needs this time alone to sort out what is happening. For so long, part of his mind has been silent—deliberately so—but now—

When he is very still—when he sits immobile in the cave that has become his sanctuary on this almost lifeless planet—he can sometimes feel a voice calling him, recognizable and unfamiliar—a contradiction, like remembering music never heard before or recalling the taste of unknown food.

As they walk back to the compound Sybok can sense Davara stealing little protective glances in his direction. Someday she will make a fine mother to his grandchildren. Sending her that thought, he feels her embarrassment.

For the past 18 months, Tri'eska and Davara, and yes, the rest of the Assembly, have been wary of him, watching for signs of another Moment. Even now Sybok can't speak of what happened—can't, with all his usual eloquence, explain how one Moment he had been speaking normally to a friend and then in the next Moment he had fallen to the ground, blinded and deafened with such light and sound that he was sure he was dying.

Convinced of it. If he is honest, not yet certain that he isn't dead, that's how real the Moment was.

"A stroke," the old midwife said, but he knew better.

"I did lose part of my mind," he told Tri'eska weeks later when he was again able to walk and work in the fields. "But it was not to a stroke."

What he did not tell her—what he has not told anyone, not even himself, not fully—is that in The Moment when he died, another part of his mind came alive again, the way a sleeping arm or leg tingles back to life after disuse.

And it's that part of his mind the voice calls to. A voice in pain.


	3. Interlopers

**Chapter Three: Interlopers**

**Disclaimer: My playground! Not where I work!**

"Can I get you something, sir?"

Selek looks up at the uniformed cadet standing at his elbow—a young, dark-skinned man with hair cut so short that at first glance he appears bald. The piping around his collar indicates that he is a senior—though whether he has actually spent four years at the Academy or is in the new accelerated program, Selek isn't certain.

Looking around, Selek notes that he is the last researcher in the room. The windows over the bank of computer monitors where he sits show what he already knows—that it is nighttime—2357.33.45, to be precise.

"No, thank you," he says, but as he turns back to the computer, some motion of the cadet—some shift in his posture or ripple in his facial expression—catches his attention.

Of course. He's not really being asked if he needs anything. He's being reminded that the library is closing.

He glances up again at the cadet who waits, hands at his side.

"Time to leave," Selek says, pushing back his chair. The cadet nods curtly and follows Selek as they make their way down the corridor of the archives building at Starfleet Headquarters. At one time only Starfleet personnel would have worked here. Now cadets often man the consoles and escort guests who have clearance.

Almost two years after the genocide and Starfleet is still in flux—short-handed, doing little more than defensive patrolling. In the past this library—indeed, all of the archives—would never have closed, would have been filled with researchers, students, workers from various embassies. Now getting access is time-consuming, fraught with so much bureaucratic wrangling that Selek had resorted to asking Sarek to intervene.

Even so, it had taken weeks to get Starfleet to give him clearance to their extensive database.

"Their reticence is understandable," Sarek told him. "Earth was a target as well."

Selek had refrained from stating the obvious—that Nero had not tapped into Starfleet's database to get the subspace frequencies for the border grids that allowed the _Narada_ to slip past the patrols. Christopher Pike had given up that information under torture—not that anyone blames him.

Or if they do, they are silent about it.

Limiting access to the database now—and shuttering the archive building part of each day—doesn't make Earth any safer. Selek chafes at the illogic.

The cadet follows him to the front door of the archive building and Selek hears the _snick_ of the lock slide into place as he starts down the marble steps to the sidewalk.

Annoying to have to curtail his search this way. Looking for evidence of the _V'tosh ka'tur_ is time-consuming and difficult enough—sifting through intel reports of unexplained or unexpected uprisings in remote colonies; mysterious prison breaks; political upheavals led by outsiders. All these could be signs of Vulcan interference in local affairs—just the kind of activities Sybok had initiated.

Leading a rebel army to kidnap diplomats, hijacking the _Enterprise_ —

 _In another universe_. Perhaps not in this one. That uncertainty makes the hunt that much harder.

And if he finds something that strongly suggests a location for the _V'tosh ka'tur_? What then? Is Federation sympathy for Vulcan still high enough to convince them to divert a starship from patrol duty to pick up a load of renegade Vulcans who might not actually want to come home?

In the past month Selek has fallen into an easy pattern of arriving early at the archives and staying until closing time, sometimes without a break, at other times leaving the building briefly and wandering along the side streets nearby, gathering his thoughts, idly noting the differences between this San Francisco and his.

In some ways he is more at home here than he is even on New Vulcan. Much of the city looks the same as he remembers it. The geography, for instance—the land cascading to the shore like enormous buckled stair steps, the cross streets so astonishingly steep that every day some hapless groundcar overturns taking a corner too swiftly.

Many of the oldest buildings are familiar; carefully preserved rows of houses, large municipal construction downtown. The road up to Twin Peaks is the same series of switchbacks he recalls, and from the top he can see that both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge stretch across the water the way they do in his memory.

The biggest, and in many ways, most disorienting, difference is where Starfleet Headquarters and the Academy are situated. When he was a young instructor, both were located across the bay, at the site of Fort Baker near Sausalito. In this universe they are in San Francisco proper, stretching along the bay at the Presidio.

Why the change? That's just the kind of question he tells himself not to ask. Who can trace why this universe evolved as it did?

What had Jim Kirk told Sybok? That he wasn't interested in thinking about what would have happened if he had turned right instead of left?

Just so, though Jim had been speaking of regret—how illogical it was, how it served little purpose except to make someone discontented.

The thought of Jim Kirk— _his_ Jim Kirk—makes him lonely, as it always does. Jim would be just the person to appreciate the differences between the two San Francisco's.

"Let's see if this Moe's serves the same rotgut," Jim would say, heading to the seedy bar favored by cadets and crew alike.

Turning his collar up against the wind, Selek heads east toward the Academy campus. Despite his thickly woven outercoat, by the time he passes the main gate, he's shivering. Overhead the stars are obscured by fog. If he could see the bay, he knows he would see fog there, too.

Another similarity.

The inability to dispel the chill, the ghost of old friends, the way the landscape calls up the past without recreating it exactly—emotional reactions, to be sure. Suddenly Selek is so weary that making his way across town to the flat he sublets is more than he is willing to do. Instead, he heads past the east gate to the large block of faculty housing that rises up from the fog like something untethered in time.

He's been here before, though never the way he is now, an uninvited intruder. For a moment he hesitates, and then with a quick look in both directions, he crosses the street and heads to the outer door.

The card reader on the outside wall presents a minor snag. Running his right hand along the top of the reader, he feels about for a hinge, tugging down as he does. With a metallic screech, the reader tumbles off the wall into his hand.

On the back of the reader he shorts out the scanner by pulling a wire loose. Immediately he hears the outer door unlatch, and after setting the reader back into the wall, he pulls open the door and enters the darkened hallway.

The first apartment on the left is Spock's—assuming, of course, that he's still renting it. The odds are high that he is. Since being commissioned, the _Enterprise_ has been almost continuously deployed, with only brief stints at Spacedock to make the ordinary sorts of adjustments expected after a shakedown cruise. Spock will not have had time to pack up and move his possessions to storage.

At least, that's what Selek assumes. Just to be safe, he stands outside the door and listens. Nothing. And no light coming through the pebbled glass insert in the door. No one's home. Selek stretches his hand toward the entry pad.

Still, he hesitates. What he's considering doing has a technical name—a legal name: breaking and entering.

Would Spock object if he knew?

There's no way to know. Would he object if the situation were reversed? The situation is so remote that he doesn't bother to calculate the odds.

Somewhere down the hall a doorknob rattles and Selek leans forward quickly, pressing his thumb against the entry pad.

The apartment smells fusty, though as soon as he adjusts the heat, the air begins to freshen. For a moment Selek stands and looks around the room.

Directly ahead of him is the sofa, a large, opened cardboard box on one end. Behind the sofa he can make out a bookshelf, and beside it, more boxes ready to be packed with its contents.

Heading down the short hallway, he looks inside the bedroom. One small carton sits on the stripped bed, like something lost or forlorn. Selek runs the palm of his hand across the top of the dusty dresser and takes a deep breath.

If he had hoped to find some comfort here, some sense of connection, he is disappointed.

Nothing has been packed up in the kitchen. Opening a cabinet, he sees mugs and stacks of saucers and plates. Lifting the lid of a tin on the counter, he smells Terran tea. For a moment he considers making himself a cup, sitting on the sofa and warming himself.

Instead he goes back into the sitting room and circles it, uneasy. On his second rotation around the room he stops at the bookshelf. There as he remembers them from his earlier visit are pictures of home—Spock's home, not his, though almost identical—curved walls and an orderly garden, large clay pots of flowers and succulents in the foreground. _His mother's touch._

On the top shelf is a framed picture of Spock and his mother taken in the recent past: Spock looking somberly toward the camera, his mother glancing up at her son, her smile obvious even from this angle.

Selek presses his fingers to his side, as if he can assuage the heaviness there.

In one corner of the room is a small desk with a subspace transceiver and computer monitor—Spock's work area when he is here, apparently. Getting past the passcodes and encryption wouldn't be that difficult.

If Sybok has tried to contact Spock here via subspace, the digital queue will have a record. Likewise with any personal correspondence Spock might have stored on the computer. It might be worth a look.

Yet when Selek pulls out the straight-backed chair and settles in front of the computer, he doesn't turn it on but folds his hands and rests them on his lap. Suddenly he feels like what he is, an interloper. He waits a beat before standing back up and palming off the lights and heat beside the front door.

As he pulls the door to, he glances back at the bookshelf in the dark, at where the pictures are even though he can't see them, like a universe of people he knows and cares about beyond his view, beyond his touch.

X X X

When he thought of her— _if_ he thought of her—he thought of her as _Amanda_ , not _Ms. Grayson._ A Vulcan tendency, to be sure, to call someone by their given name instead of the clan designation. That linguistic tradition helped explain why so many of his colleagues called her Amanda, the way they would if she were Vulcan.

But because she was a human, he called her Ms. Grayson when he spoke to her. A human custom, to honor the clan designation until asked to move to the given name. Even then the speaker had to use discretion to avoid offense. At least, that's what he had observed in the two years he'd been on Earth.

As her supervisor, in particular, he had to remain formal in their dealings.

Admittedly, this was becoming more difficult after setting up a workspace for her in one corner of his office. Not his choice—but necessary, since no empty offices were available and none of his colleagues—even those who sought out her help and called her _Amanda—_ were willing to share their offices with her.

Not that she was annoying when she was working at her desk in the corner—or not deliberately so. Still, she made noise. Little rustles when she moved. The squeak of her shoe on the tile. The click of her nails on the keyboard. A sigh now and then.

And she had an unusual aroma. Not unpleasant, but different. Unfamiliar. Like an earthy citrus, or something seasonal and temporary, like the smell of linden trees in certain European cities in the summer.

He needed to gather more data to decide how to characterize it.

This morning, however, the smell of coffee preceded her as she walked into his office, a to-go cup from the diner down the street in either hand.

"Here," she said, setting down one of the cups on his desk. She walked across the room and with a suite of noises settled into her chair.

Turning, he said, "What is this?"

"Coffee. Black, so you might want something in it."

"I do not drink coffee," he said, turning his attention to his computer.

"I know," she said, a tiny huffiness in her voice. He turned back around. "The only thing I could find in the break room is that horrible—"

She seemed to catch herself then. Sarek noticed a flush creep up her neck and cheeks.

"I mean, I'm sure it's fine, but I don't care for whatever that…stuff…is that everyone drinks."

"Theris."

"That's what it's called? Well, I thought you might like to try something else. Some coffee."

"But I did not request it."

She let out another puff of air and frowned. _Annoyance?_ Sarek was at a loss to know why, if in fact she was annoyed. Because their drinking habits differed? He looked at her closely and was startled at how she seemed to be waiting for something.

Ah, for him to acknowledge the coffee. With a sudden insight, he understood. When humans gave gifts, they expected a particular response.

"Thank you for the coffee."

There. He had discharged his obligation.

"Aren't you going to try it?"

She was still looking at him with the same intensity as before. Was there something else he was expected to say?

"I do not drink coffee," he said again. That settled the issue. He swiveled in his chair to continue reading the Lovirian trade agreement posted on his computer monitor.

"Never?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean, have you ever tried it?"

"Are we still discussing coffee?"

"It's a common beverage on Earth," Amanda said. "You will probably be served it at Earth functions. It might be wise to have some familiarity with it."

That changed the equation somewhat. Picking up the cardboard cup, he took a tentative sip.

"Do you like it?" she said. He let the coffee roll across his tongue before swallowing it.

"It tastes of burned plant seeds and volatile oils."

He watched her face fall.

"Oh," she said. "Well, here. You might like it better if you add one of these."

She stood up and opened her hand, showing him several colorful paper packets she had obviously been holding. Careful not to touch her palm, he picked one up.

"What is this?"

"That's creamer. That's what I put in my coffee. Tear it open this way."

She set the other packets on his desk and took a creamer packet in her hand, ripping the top off and shaking the contents into her cup.

He pulled one edge of a packet. The smell of saturated fat and dehydrated protein wafted up.

"This contains sodium caseinate," he said, feeling slightly queasy and setting the opened packet on his desk. "An animal product."

Amanda put her hand to her cheek in a gesture he had come to recognize as surprise.

"Oh! I'm sorry! I thought…well, I didn't realize you were completely vegan!"

With a frantic motion, she lowered her hand and scooped the opened packet up, spilling the contents across his desk.

"Sorry!" she said again, flushing pink along her throat. Her peculiar aroma—the one Sarek still struggled to identify—grew stronger as she leaned forward and wiped at his desktop with her hand.

Like Terran limes, or oranges, he mused. Once he had taken a tour of an agricultural project in the Sonoma Valley, a cooperative group growing Meyer lemons. The fragrance of the trees and the hot soil—the ripening fruit. Yes, he decided. That was how Amanda smelled, when he could get close enough to detect it.

"Please do not concern yourself," he said, motioning toward his desk.

He would, of course, have to decontaminate the area before continuing his work. T'Lin would probably have some supplies—

"Don't give up yet!" Amanda said. "You might like sweetener better." She put a different paper packet on his desk and frowned. "You don't have any rules about artificial sweeteners, do you?"

Without answering, Sarek picked up the small packet and read the listed ingredients.

"I am uncertain that Vulcans can metabolize this," he said, and Amanda nodded.

"I'm not even sure _humans_ can," she said. "What about this?"

"Sucrose? This is refined sugar. Its toxic properties for Vulcans _and_ humans are well-documented."

Amanda stepped back.

"I guess you'll have to drink it black."

She was watching him so carefully that he felt compelled to pick the cardboard cup up again and take another sip.

"Well?"

"It seems to have a stimulative effect."

"You can already tell that?"

"My heart rate has increased by 4.6 %. Does it affect humans in this manner?"

"That's why we drink it. Because it has…what did you call it…a stimulative effect."

"It is quite unpleasant."

He set the cup down and sat back.

"Don't you drink…stimulants?" she asked. Her voice sounded almost sorrowful—certainly full of some emotion. He shook his head.

"I didn't realize that your tea didn't have any caffeine—or whatever the Vulcan equivalent is," she said. "I should have checked more carefully. I just assumed you were drinking all that tea—"

"Theris," Sarek corrected, and she nodded.

"Theris," she said, "for the same reason we drink tea and coffee. You know, to wake you up in the morning. As a jolt in the afternoon. To improve your concentration."

"Unlike humans," he said promptly, setting the coffee cup in the trash receptacle beside his desk, "Vulcans do not need external stimulation to improve our concentration. We control our focus through internal monitoring."

"Well," Amanda said, sitting back in her chair with an audible _whump_. "La-dee-dah for you."

It was such a startling comment that Sarek turned back around to look at her. She was sitting with one knee over the other, her arms crossed and head tilted. For the first time he took note of her outfit—a light gray skirt nipped in at her waist and a short-sleeved white sweater that was just snug enough to be a distraction.

If Vulcans were distracted by such things.

"La-dee-dah?" he asked.

She uncrossed her arms and leaned forward. As she did, her skirt rode up a fraction.

The coffee. It must be to blame for this hyper-alert state.

"La-dee-dah," she said as if reciting from a dictionary. "An exclamation indicating scorn and disbelief."

Sarek was baffled. Her facial expression was serious—even more so than normal—yet her tone of voice was…playful? Mocking? Had he offended her in some way? Was she suggesting that he had lied about the Vulcan ability to concentrate?

The smell of Meyer lemons drifted in the air.

"You do not believe me?" he said. "I assure you, Ms. Grayson, Vulcans do not lie."

"Oh, really?" she said, reaching to her desk, slipping her fingers around her cardboard coffee cup, and lifting it to her lips. "La-dee-dah to that, too."

X X X X

The Assembly area is crowded but Sybok looks up as Tri'eska appears, her staff in one hand, her gear bag slung over one shoulder as if she has just come from hunting. Her disguise probably fools no one, least of all him. The people around her look wary and move back a fraction. Smart, to stay at arm's length of a Rihannsu carrying a weapon.

With an effort, Sybok returns his attention to the elderly man standing and speaking from the crowd.

"But why leave now," the man says, as much to the people behind him as to Sybok standing on the speaker's stone, "before the harvest season? What is so urgent that we have to abandon months of work?"

A murmur ripples through the Assembly. Tri'eska hefts her staff and shifts uneasily.

Waiting for the noise to die down, Sybok says, "Where we are going, you will never be hungry again. You will stretch out your hand and crops will grow, effortlessly. Your children will eat well all year long, not just after harvest."

"If such a place exists, then why did you bring us here?"

 _Raska'ot, speaking out of turn_. Another murmur ripples through the group as a thickset young man slowly gets to his feet.

"If you wish to continue," Sybok says, gesturing to the elderly man, "Raska'ot will wait."

It's clearly a rebuke to Raska'ot, but the crowd reacts as if Sybok has scolded them, stirring restlessly. He hasn't spoken to the Assembly in months, spending all of his free time listening for the inner voice to guide him. A mistake, not to mingle with the people for so long. When he called them here tonight, he sensed their wariness.

Darting a glance between Sybok and the Raska'ot, the elderly man says, "No, I have said what I wanted," and sits down.

"Then you may speak," Sybok says, freighting his voice with authority, and the young man walks forward and steps up to the speaker's stone. In the background Sybok sees Tri'eska moving closer.

Roughly half of the Assembly are Rihannsu like Tri'eska and Raska'ot, exiled political refugees Sybok found living a hard-scrabble life on a planet even bleaker than this one. He and a small group of _V'tosh ka'tur_ had settled there briefly when they first left Vulcan years ago, forming a forced alliance with their distant Rihannsu cousins before moving on, first by bartering their way onboard a freighter and then hiring a small flotilla of private scows to carry them the rest of the way here.

The lack of technology on this planet was part of its appeal. Its relative isolation was another.

"Alone in the wilderness," Sybok told the Assembly more than once, "with only ourselves to depend on, we can discover who we truly are."

And they had, in a manner of speaking. Life on the edge had forced the issue, had meant that the industrious among them had—if not exactly thrived—survived. Those unwilling to work hard had not.

A life where emotions ran hot—and sometimes very, very cold.

"I say again," Raska'ot says, louder this time, "why are we here? If you knew of a place of such abundance, why did you lead us to this place of hardship and suffering?"

In the late afternoon sunlight, Raska'ot's face is ruddy, his thick, black eyebrows overhanging eyes just as black, impenetrable, like the gaze of a _k'karee_ before it strikes—and just as dangerous. A rumble travels through the crowd.

Raising his hands, Sybok says, "We _have_ suffered. We _have_ faced hardships. And we have looked inside ourselves and overcome them. Look how strong we are! How strong we have become!"

He looks around as if seeing the crowd for the first time. His face breaks into a broad smile.

The mood of the crowd begins to shift in his favor.

As he knew it would.

"This place has been our crucible, our forge, getting us ready for what is to come. We weren't ready before, but now we are."

"Ready for what?" someone calls out—not with hostility but with genuine curiosity— and Sybok lowers his hands and scans slowly from left to right.

"Ready to go home! To Vulcan! To take back what is ours!"

" _Your_ home," Raska'ot mutters, but the crowd is too busy cheering to hear him. A few moments later and the Assembly starts to disperse, carried away by the excitement.

"Be careful," Tri'eska says, suddenly at his ear. "Some of us don't want to become trespassers on another world."

"You won't be," Sybok says, gentling her with his glance. "You have as much right to be there as anyone else."

"And if the Vulcans disagree?"

But he lets his silence be his answer.

For now.

**A/N: I hope I'm not confusing everyone by skipping to Amanda and Sarek's past in the middle section of each chapter. My goal is to tie the three story lines together and eventually let them converge in the present. Let me know if this isn't working (or if it is!) Thanks to everyone who reads and reviews! You keep me writing!**


	4. Adapting

**Chapter Four: Adapting**

**Disclaimer: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.**

She comes to with a start.

Her Starfleet training kicks in automatically and she doesn't move, listening for whatever woke her. In the dark room, all she hears is the steady thrum of the _Enterprise's_ engines.

A dream then, or someone passing loudly in the corridor outside her quarters, must have pulled her out of her sleep. Breathing in and out slowly, Nyota wills her tensed muscles to relax.

And then she hears it, a soft susurration that is at once familiar and unidentifiable, a noise so faint that she has to strain to catch it.

_Spock._

Sliding her shoulder from under the duvet, she rolls over gently and faces him. The only light in the room is from a small candle globe on the dresser but it's enough for her to see that he's asleep, his hair ruffled as it never is when he is awake, his lashes dark against his cheeks.

She so rarely sees him this way that she resists the temptation to curl up and give in to sleep right away. Instead, she lets her gaze drift over the shadows of his exposed ear, the plane of his shoulder. The sound of his breathing is louder now that she is turned toward him, and more irregular than she had first thought.

Perhaps he is dreaming—though he's told her more than once that Vulcans rarely do. More likely, he's working something out in his unconscious—looking for the discrepancy in the fuel consumption logs, for instance, or reviewing tomorrow's crew rotation.

A flicker so subtle that she almost misses it creases his brow. _An unhappy thought?_

She stretches out her hand and brushes the tip of her forefinger across his upturned palm, hoping to quiet whatever is troubling him.

At once she feels herself falling into a vortex of electricity and color, a kaleidoscope of sensations so dizzying that she presses her eyes shut. A roaring sound in her ears—a blast of heat on her face—and then the spinning stops and she opens her eyes.

The dark room has been replaced with a dusty plain so bright that she lifts one hand to shade her eyes. Vulcan—or what she imagines it must have looked like.

"Why are you here?"

Spock's voice, coming from behind her right shoulder.

"Is this a dream?" she asks, and he says, "A memory."

Before she asks him to explain, she sees a knot of young Vulcan children walking past, all dressed in school uniforms. Two very small boys run ahead, one kicking up dust, the other stooping to examine something in the road. The older children—close to adolescence but not quite there—are chatting with each other. Following twenty paces behind is a dark-haired boy a few years younger, his arms wrapped around his satchel.

"You?" Nyota asks, but suddenly she knows what he knows—that the largest, loudest boy is Stonn, that when he falls back from the crowd of children and deliberately jostles Spock, knocking his satchel from his arms and scattering his padds and styluses, no one pauses or looks back.

The loneliness is more overwhelming than any sense of injustice.

Another view—Spock at a table in a kitchen, his school satchel in a chair beside him, someone—his mother?—bustling in the background, opening and shutting the stasis unit, preparing a meal. A much older boy, a young man really, enters the room. Something he says elicits laughter—yes, from Spock's mother, who pauses and hands him a glass of water.

 _Sybok._ Spock has told her several stories about him, but she's never seen him this clearly, the way he stands etched in Spock's memories.

"What's this?" Sybok says, lowering his hand into Spock's satchel and pulling out a padd, dust-covered, scratched.

Darting a glance at his brother, Spock says, "I dropped it."

Not a lie, but not the truth either.

Still, Nyota feels what Spock feels, guilt and more than a little worry that Sybok will call him to account.

"This one, too?"

Sybok is suddenly holding up another padd. Spock looks away. His mother stops what she is doing and says something indistinct.

The scene shifts again, this time to Spock's bedroom, neat and orderly in a way that presages his habits now. He's dressed in loose fitting sleeping clothes, sitting cross-legged on the bed, his chin resting in his hands. Sybok is there as well, pacing the length of the room.

"If someone at school is harming you—" Sybok says.

"I wasn't harmed," Spock says quickly, almost breathlessly.

"If someone at school is harming you," Sybok says again, more deliberately this time, "then you have to stop it. Tell your teachers, or tell me or Father."

"There is nothing to tell," Spock says, which is also not quite a lie and not quite the truth.

Sybok stops pacing and stands near the bed, looking down at Spock.

"If you will not seek help," he says, "then you must defend yourself. If someone is harming you, you must adapt to his rules of engagement."

"You are suggesting that I use violence?"

"Sometimes violence has to be met with violence," Sybok says, and Nyota sees Spock's face reflect the horror she knows he feels.

"That is not the Vulcan tradition."

With an audible sigh, Sybok sits on the bed beside Spock.

"No, it is not. But it might be the right thing to do."

The room begins to swirl and Nyota blinks twice and opens her eyes. She's in her quarters in her bed. By the light of the candle globe she can see that although Spock hasn't changed his position, he's awake, watching her.

"I didn't mean to wake you," she says, and he lifts his arm, an invitation for her to scoot closer.

"I am glad you did," he says, brushing her hair from her cheek and tucking his chin against the top of her head, a rare gesture of tenderness.

"You're worried that we won't find him," she says simply, suddenly knowing that it is true.

"Yes," he says, pulling her tighter to him. "And worried that we will."

X

"Are you busy?"

The answer was so obvious that Sarek wasn't sure how to respond. Of course he was busy, if by busy Ms. Grayson—Amanda—meant productive. When was he ever not productive during office hours, in his office? Surely she could see that he was busy with the thorny problem of the Lovirian trade agreement spread across his computer monitor, stacks of flimplasts on his desk.

This must be one of those times when someone's words were different from the actual meaning.

Sarek glanced over his shoulder to the corner where Amanda was sitting behind a small desk. Her chair was pulled out and angled toward him, and she was leaning forward, one elbow propped on her knee, her chin resting in her hand. An informal pose, yet the look on her face was…serious? Troubled? He still had difficulty parsing her facial expressions.

Not for lack of trying. Even when Amanda wasn't speaking to him —or looking in his direction, for that matter—, he often found himself studying her face for clues to her mood. His efficiency suffered as a result.

If she noticed, that might explain her question about being busy. Perhaps she was concerned that his productivity was less than optimal lately.

He turned back to his monitor. "Do you require something?"

"If this is a bad time, I can wait," she said.

"Please, proceed."

He heard one leg of the chair scrape on the floor. A rustle followed—her adjusting the hem of her skirt, most likely. By human standards the skirt was modest, the curve of her knee just visible. By Vulcan standards, of course, she was nearly naked. More than once Sarek had debated asking her to refrain from wearing such attire.

For some unaccountable reason, he had not yet had that conversation.

"Well, I have some questions about the policy manual," she said.

"I assumed you would," Sarek said, thumbing to the screen that listed all the historical trading partners of the Lovirian syndicate. "That's why I asked you to review it."

She took a sharp intake of breath, something he noticed she did when she was about to say something she deemed unpleasant. He braced himself and thumbed to the next screen.

"How old _is_ this policy manual?"

An innocuous comment. He relaxed his shoulders and said, "An aide to Ambassador Kuvar wrote it when the embassy was first established here. As far as I know, it has never been revised."

He returned to the first screen listing the Lovirian trade partners and scanned them again. _The Triffians had to be here somewhere. He was sure he had seen them earlier._

Amanda took another deep breath.

"That explains a lot," Amanda said. "This part about social interactions with humans, for instance. Have you read it?"

"Before being posted on Earth, yes. The manual is required reading for every embassy worker."

"But it's ridiculous! It sounds like it was written by someone who had never met a human before!"

 _There the Triffians were, listed at the very top of the page. Odd that he had overlooked them twice._ With a quick motion, Sarek tabbed the page for later.

"The odds are high that neither Ambassador Kuvar nor his aide had met any humans when the manual was written," he said, darting a quick glance backward. Amanda was stock still, staring at him. An unreadable expression fluttered across her features.

"No wonder it's full of bad advice!"

Despite himself, Sarek felt a prickle of irritation. After all, the manual had done good service for many years. Or at least reasonable service. Calling it _ridiculous_ was an excessively emotional reaction.

"Such as?"

He turned back to his computer and called up a map of the contested trade routes.

"Such as this."

Her chair squeaked and Sarek knew that she was leaning toward her own computer monitor.

"Begin every conversation with a human," she intoned in the telltale rhythm of someone reading aloud, "with a laudatory observation about the participant's appearance or abilities."

Without taking his eyes off his screen, Sarek said, "Is there a problem with that?"

"This treats humans like silly children who have to be flattered! _Laudatory observations_!" she huffed. " _Begin every conversation with a compliment_. Look how formulaic it is, how insincere!"

"I have observed that humans begin most conversations with formulaic commentary."

"Sure, things like _hello_ and _how are you_. But that's not what this manual is suggesting. Poor Tirek! Every time we meet for his language tutorial, the poor man tries out new words for _smart_ and _beautiful_. No wonder he keeps scheduling more vocabulary lessons!"

The air in the room was suddenly close and hot. _A malfunction in the air exchanger, no doubt._ Sarek made a note to have T'Lin call the repair technician.

"Tirek should not monopolize your time," he said. Leaning forward, he narrowed his focus to the computer screen.

"Oh, he's not," Amanda said quickly. From the sound of her shoes shooshing on the floor, Sarek knew that she had uncrossed her legs and was sitting primly upright in her chair, the way she did when she was particularly insistent in her arguments. "In fact, that brings up another concern about the policy manual."

"Indeed," Sarek said, and Amanda continued.

"The manual says that the staff are encouraged to stay in the embassy compound."

"That is logical," Sarek said, sitting back from the monitor. "After all, we live here."

"But what about socializing? And touring the sites around town? Tirek told me that he's never even been out to eat in San Francisco."

"You discussed eating establishments with Tirek?"

"That's something the policy manual needs to stress," she said. "The importance of sharing food. Humans spend a great deal of time getting to know each other over meals. Yet the manual doesn't mention that at all. Tirek seemed surprised when I suggested we share a meal."

A wave of intense discomfort, almost physical, washed over him.

The unexpected difficulty he was having with the Lovirian trade agreement was obviously to blame. He looked at the map on his computer monitor with a feeling close to disgust—it was clearly incomplete and inaccurate. If he wanted to pilot past the impasse in the agreement, he would need better data. No use to continue working on the treaty until he had better information.

With a snap of his hand, he turned off his computer.

"Is something wrong?" Amanda asked.

"Vulcans do not socialize during meals," Sarek said. Picking up a stack of flimplasts, he began sorting them. "Mealtimes are for consuming sufficient calories, nothing more."

To his surprise, Amanda laughed.

"And that's…logical?" she asked, still laughing. Setting down the flimplasts, he turned in his chair to face her.

"Indeed. We value efficiency, Ms. Grayson."

Rather than drawing a disapproving frown from her, his words made her laugh harder. He watched as she ducked her chin down and looked away briefly before reaching up to tuck back a stray lock of hair.

The sight of her fingertips brushing the curve of her ear made his breath hitch in a way that was curiously disconcerting.

The temperature controls in the room definitely required attention.

"Oh, you do?" she said, smoothing the palms of her hands along the lap of her skirt. "Well, it seems to me that it would be more _efficient_ to eat _while_ you socialize—you know, do two things at once."

Consciously slowing his breathing, Sarek said, "It is not Vulcan tradition to do so."

"I understand that," Amanda said, "but when in Rome—"

"Rome?"

"It's an Earth saying. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. It means you should adapt to the culture you find yourself in. You know, to be agreeable. To get along."

"Vulcans do not try to _get along_ , as you say."

Crossing her arms, Amanda said, "Exactly! That's why you hired me, remember? You need help getting along. Sometimes you have to bend."

"But discarding Vulcan tradition—"

"Is sometimes the most efficient thing to do, right? Or the most logical. You can't be a diplomat if you aren't willing to compromise."

She was looking at him so closely that he was unable to look away. In this light her eyes were the color of the coffee she insisted he try once. The lock of hair she had tidied behind her ear fell forward as she leaned closer.

"Well?" she said, and with a start he realized that she was waiting for a response.

"Your logic is commendable," he said, raising one eyebrow.

She laughed again, lightly.

"I'll take that as permission to edit the manual," she said, sliding her chair so that she was directly behind her desk. "Let's see, I'm going to start by suggesting that every embassy worker take a human to lunch. They can talk about anything they want to—but they have to talk. Building social contacts—that's important, too. I'm going to start by taking Tirek to this little vegetarian diner I found near the waterfront—"

She glanced down at her keyboard and raised her hands to begin typing.

"Perhaps," Sarek said, and she paused and looked up, "you and I should discuss your proposed changes first. Over lunch, if you prefer."

"Lunch? With you?"

She frowned slightly and pursed her lips. Disapproval? Surprise?

"To test your premise," Sarek said, "that eating and socializing are more efficient when done together."

For a moment she gave him another unreadable look—or more than one, her eyes narrowing and widening in turn, almost like markers of her unspoken thoughts. That same intake of her breath that usually signaled an unpleasant revelation caught him off guard.

"I don't know," she said. "I hope you don't mind my being honest—"

Instantly he was wary. "Please," he said, feeling his heart beating harder in his side.

"But you aren't the easiest person to talk to."

This was unexpected. For the past two months—since he had set up a desk in one corner as her work space—he had spoken to her frequently and often at length.

"I mean, like today," she continued. "The whole time I've been trying to talk to you, you've been looking at your computer. I'm not even sure you knew I was in the room."

For a moment, Sarek was so astonished that he didn't move. That she was completely unaware of the level of his…distraction…the way her every sound and motion garnered his attention, was a relief.

On the other hand, she was looking for _some_ level of attention.

"Ms. Grayson," he said, "if I have seemed inattentive, it is because my skills in conversing with humans are lacking."

"I shouldn't have said anything," she said, suddenly sounding tentative, her cheeks flushed with what he had come to recognize as embarrassment.

"If you had not," Sarek said, trying to sound agreeable, "I would not be able to improve. All the more reason to join me for lunch."

"For a tutorial?" she said, looking up at last, and he nodded.

"A lesson in how to be a Roman," he said.

"It won't be easy," Amanda said. She rose from her seat.

She wasn't smiling but something in the tone of her voice was light and playful. Sarek felt his earlier unease waft away.

"Indeed," he said, standing up and waiting for her to cross the space between them.

Shaking her head and looking down, she said, "See, on Earth we have another saying about Romans. _Rome wasn't built in a day_."

"Meaning my instruction may require more than one lunch?"

Smiling at last, she took a step forward and said, "Your logic is commendable."

X X

Sybok stifles a cough as the Altoran cruiser descends slowly, stirring up the gray dust that covers everything on this planet. Every morning the settlers wipe down their cooking dishes and shake out their bedding, but by nightfall the fine dust settles again, leaving a grainy film that makes staying clean a challenge.

Just one more thing he won't miss.

When the cruiser turns off its engine at last, Sybok takes a step forward and raises his arm, a signal to the other members of the Assembly to join him.

Like Sybok, they are dressed in the long cloaks and headgear typical of desert dwellers. Hidden underneath their robes are whatever weapons they have been able to cadge together—more short daggers and reaping tools than actual projectile-firing weapons. No one owns a working phaser or a disruptor.

Sybok carries an Andorian _ushaan-tor,_ a wicked-looking ice pick he had bartered two kilos of grain for several seasons ago. As the door of the cruiser opens, he lets the _ushaan-tor_ swing in his hand, the heft and sway of it offering a measure of comfort.

The first trader to emerge is someone Sybok does not recognize, but his heart falls when he sees Arnissakrea behind the stranger.

Tall and willowy, the Altorans are translucent-skinned humanoids. Watching them is fascinating—their muscles in constant motion, the visible organs pumping and twitching and keeping the light pink lubricating fluid flowing through their bodies. Normally Sybok finds them interesting company. And normally he would have welcomed time spent talking with Arnissakrea.

Not today.

Arnissakrea looks around and lifts his limbs in a gesture of greeting as Sybok walks forward.

"Friend Sybok!" the alien calls in a voice that sounds like high-pitched keening. "How has the harvest been? We have supplies to trade."

At his back Sybok hears the shuffle of feet, the rustle of cloaks, as the Assembly members get ready. Glancing around, he finds Raska'ot's face in the crowd.

"Remember," Sybok says _sotto voce_ , "no violence."

Raska'ot says nothing.

"Friend Sybok!" Arnissakrea calls again, and Sybok turns around.

"I require your ship," he says without preamble. Better to state at once his intentions.

The Altoran traders—five of them including Arnissakrea—react in obvious alarm, their arms moving rapidly as they spin around and head back to the cruiser's open hatch.

"Stop!"

Sybok's voice carries across the distance. The Altorans freeze in place.

"We do not want to harm you," he says, as much for the Assembly members as for the Altorans. "You will remain here. A Stacian cargo vessel is due here in a few days. You can get transport back home with them."

"Why are you doing this?"

That from Arnissakrea, who holds out his hands in an obvious gesture of supplication.

"It is necessary," Sybok says. "When we have arrived at our destination, we will see that your ship is returned to you."

"If you desire transport, we can take you," another Altoran says. "You do not have to take our ship and strand us here."

"No!" Raska'ot calls out. "They cannot be trusted!"

"Please!" Arnissakrea says. "If you take our ship, you will be criminals, hunted and despised. If it is transport you want, trade for it instead. We have never been unfair with you."

It is playing out just as Sybok has imagined it would—the desperate bargaining, the mounting pressure to act decisively. With a sigh, he says, "Our crops have failed. We have nothing to barter."

Resignation and regret crease his brow. Freeing the _ushaan-tor_ from his sleeve, he moves toward the cruiser.

"When we arrive at your destination," Arnissakrea says, his anxiety making his voice shrill, "you can arrange for adequate compensation. Surely you know someone there who can pay for your passage!"

It's true, Sybok thinks. Most of the _V'tosh ka'tur_ still have family on Vulcan. Would they be willing to help settle a debt?

Would Sarek? He isn't sure. Amanda, on the other hand, has never been shy about wanting him to return.

He pauses, weighing the possibilities.

"I will consider it," he says at last. A murmur, low and dark, travels through the Assembly.

Seeming to sense the precariousness of the situation, Arnissakrea unlatches a pocket around his waist and pulls out a digital padd.

"How far is it you must travel?" Arnissakrea says, his breath rapid and shallow. Sybok feels another wave of emotion—pity this time, and empathy in the face of the Altoran's fear.

Moving close enough to take the padd, Sybok hears footsteps behind him—the Assembly ready if he needs them.

"Here are the coordinates," he says, handing the padd back to Arnissakrea. "Vulcan, though your people may have another name for it."

The alien's translucent eyes tilt around and down to the padd. When he looks up, Sybok feels the hair on the back of his neck begin to prickle.

"We can't go there," Arnissakrea says. "There's a warning beacon around this area."

He holds up the padd and circles one section with a thin finger.

"He's lying," Raska'ot says at his shoulder.

"No! See! It's marked."

Arnissakrea offers to hand the padd to Sybok.

"Why is it marked? What does this say?"

Pulling back his hand, Arnissakrea says, "There's a singularity here. If we get too close, we'll be caught in its gravity well."

"That's impossible," Sybok says.

"I told you," Raska'ot says, "he's lying. He's trying to trick us."

"No!" Arnissakrea says.

One of the other Altorans breaks away and sprints toward the cruiser hatch. As Arnissakrea gives a warning shout, Sybok sees a stone-tipped javelin flying through the air and hears the piercing cry as it hits the back of the running Altoran.

In a mad rush the young Assembly members hurry forward, knocking the other Altorans to the ground.

"No!" Sybok shouts, but the rising blood lust of the Rihannsu and _V'tosh ka'tur_ is too powerful, carrying them headfirst in a frenzied wave.

The sickening crunch of rock on bone as someone—Raska'ot perhaps—raises his hand and lets it fall against Arnissakrea's head—Sybok hears it and feels the pain as his own.

The alien hitting the ground, pink liquid oozing from an open wound, his soulful eyes looking back as Sybok offers a silent apology—this, too, is an image that haunts him after the rushed take-off, after adjusting to the unfamiliar thrum of the engines and the smell and chill of the ship, after presiding over the quarrels about quarters as the Assembly spreads out through the cargo bay and makes places for themselves.

"They were lying," Raska'ot says later as he checks the coordinates on the navicomputer. "It has to be there."

But when he finally closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind of the events of the day, Sybok isn't sure.

And more troubling is what he _is_ sure about—that the violence that spiraled so quickly out of control, that felt like a necessary adaptation to an unpredictable situation, is only the beginning.


	5. Progeny

**Chapter Five: Progeny**

**Disclaimer: Writing fanfiction for free since 2010. Urp!  
**

_Earth, 18 months after Nero…._

Sarek's apartment in the Vulcan compound on Earth is small and spartan, and after being closed up for several months, musty, too. As soon as he enters the main room, he adjusts the air exchanger, waiting to make sure it switches on before moving to the center of the room and standing still, taking a deep breath.

The fine, silty smell of dust and furniture fibers; a whiff of stale tea leaves; the beginnings of mildew. He takes another breath. Nothing more.

It was bound to happen eventually, this moment when he would no longer be able to detect the faint mixture of floral notes and citrus that he associates with Amanda.

"We're losing her in pieces," Amanda's sister Cecilia told him the last time they spoke. At one time he might have found such a metaphor confusing, but no more. Instead of losing Amanda all at once 18 months ago, he's been losing her bit by bit ever since. Across the wide expanse of the table when he eats his meals alone; in the stillness of their bed; turning to share some observation, her absence startling him before he remembers that she is gone.

The loss of her scent adds to the weight of his grief in a way that no longer surprises him.

He closes his eyes for a moment before heading to the bedroom.

The bed is stripped bare, a layer of fine dust covering the dresser. Almost with relief, Sarek is glad for the work.

But too quickly he makes the bed and wipes the dust away.

Tea? The idea fills his mouth with the taste of ashes. Opening his travel bag, he starts to unpack instead.

Most of the clothes in his bag are new, though Sarek is more fortunate than most Vulcans to still possess some clothes and other objects from before the genocide, things he had kept in the apartment on Earth. This heavy cloak, for instance. Sarek pulls it from his bag and refolds it neatly, fingering the family signet embroidered along the front hem. He bought it when he first came to work for the embassy decades ago, thinking it would be useful in the chill of Earth's weather.

How little he had known about humans then, how unprepared he was to deal with them. The memory of the blunders he made still makes him squirm.

 _Water under the bridge,_ he can hear Amanda say. She would counsel him not to waste time on regret.

Pulling open the top drawer of the dresser, he sets the robe inside and slides it closed. It feels odd to do so. This drawer—indeed, most of these drawers—were Amanda's. Sarek kept his clothes in his travel bag, not, as he liked to tease her, because he was crowded out, but because it was simpler not to unpack.

She had never really liked this apartment, complaining that it was too small and isolated to entertain guests, though she made a valiant effort at making it more homelike, adding holovids on the walls and keeping Vulcan staples in the kitchen. Years ago when Sybok and Spock were in school, she usually stayed behind on Vulcan when Sarek traveled, but in the past few years she came with him when the Federation Council was in session in San Francisco, heading out for brief trips to Seattle to see Cecilia or dropping in on Spock at the Academy faculty housing with an armload of imported _plomeek_ shoots and an expectation that he would drop whatever he was doing to help her make soup.

"It gives her pleasure to spend time with you this way," Sarek told Spock when he complained once. "She asks little enough of you as it is."

Not surprisingly, Spock did not hide his annoyance, his expression broadcasting his emotion in a way that seemed deliberately provocative.

Or if not provocative, then careless. As he often did, Sarek ended that conversation sooner than he intended, and with some heat.

Arguments with Spock were typical this way—short and intense and one-sided, Sarek stating his expectations, his displeasure at being challenged…Spock saying little, his defiance all but guaranteed.

How different from Sybok, who had fought all his battles openly and loudly.

The second drawer is, like the others, empty. The first time he had come back to the apartment after the genocide, Sarek collected all of Amanda's clothes and gave them away. Too many survivors had fled with nothing and were in dire need. At the time he hadn't hesitated. It was, after all, illogical to be attached to material possessions.

Now, however, the empty drawers feel like another loss.

Sliding a stack of informal tunics in the second drawer, Sarek feels some resistance. _Something in the back of the drawer?_ Moving the tunics aside, he slides his hand in and fishes out something thin and silky.

One of Amanda's scarves—a gift from Sybok years ago. Sarek recalls Amanda's distress the last time they returned from Earth and she thought the scarf had been lost in transit.

He holds it up and runs his hand over the fabric—an oddly slubbed silk dyed the color of dark chocolate, almost the shade of Amanda's eyes.

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!" Amanda said when Sybok handed it to her one morning as they sat together at breakfast. He was already a young teenager then, Spock not yet in school. "How did you know it was Mother's Day?"

"I overheard you talking to your sister," Sybok said, the unmistakable look of satisfaction on his face making Sarek uneasy. "You mentioned buying a gift for your mother. Since it is not the anniversary of your mother's nativity, I surmised it is an Earth custom to give gifts to mothers at this time."

Sybok had darted a glance at Sarek then, as if daring him to contradict him, but it was Spock who spoke up.

"She is my mother, too," he said, and Sybok rested his hand on his head and ruffled his hair, something Spock let no one else do.

"That is why this gift is from you as well," Sybok said. Mollified, Spock picked his spoon from the table and dipped it into his morning broth.

"Thank you to both of my boys," Amanda said, grinning. She unfurled the scarf and deftly wrapped it around her hair. "Oh, this so fancy! I'll enjoy wearing this when I go out!"

The entire exchange could not have lasted more than a minute, but from this distance in time—after all the _water under the bridge_ that has passed since then—what stands out most in Sarek's mind is not the pleasure the scarf gave Amanda, or his own unexpected satisfaction at Amanda's unconditional _my boys_ —but the niggling worry that Sybok's emotional entanglement, so evident, so close to the surface, was proof of his biological mother's touch.

Whatever drew her to the _V'tosh ka'tur_ —her willingness to experiment, her need for sensation—was Sybok's inheritance, too. That thought routinely disturbed Sarek's meditation—and worse—lifted his voice in alarm when he saw signs of emotional imbalance in his son—made his words to him sound angry instead of concerned.

Holding the scarf up to his face, he inhales deeply.

Nothing more than the echo of the fragrant wood of the drawer.

He sets the scarf on the top of the dresser and continues to unpack. As he finishes, the apartment comm chimes and he moves swiftly to the main living area to answer it. _Talik, most likely, with tomorrow's schedule._

But the figure on the comm is Commander Arlington, one of the Starfleet liaison officers.

"Commander?"

"I apologize for disturbing you," the Commander says, "but I thought you would want to know." Recently recalled from retirement, the Commander is a short, gray-haired man with thick eyebrows and a perpetual frown. His reputation as a no-nonsense pragmatist is well-deserved; that he is calling Sarek now, at 0052, suggests a strong probability that Starfleet knows the whereabouts of the _V'tosh ka'tur._

"You've found them?" Sarek asks, and Commander Arlington shakes his head.

"Not quite. A Stacian cargo runner picked up a stranded Altoran crew twelve hours ago from an agricultural colony near the Diraga system," the Commander says. "Their ship was commandeered by a group of settlers who said their destination was Vulcan."

"Indeed." Sarek's face flushes and he feels lightheaded.

"I know," Commander Arlington says, his frown deepening. "Obviously they didn't know about….what has happened. When the Altorans tried to tell them, they attacked and took over the ship."

Sarek has to take a breath before he can speak.

"Was anyone hurt?"

"Unknown," the commander says. "When the cargo runner docks at the Diragan trading center, we'll know more."

Sarek nods and reaches to cut the link. The odds are high that the attackers are _V'tosh ka'tur_. Who else would have Vulcan as a destination? A far-flung group living on a primitive agricultural planet might not have heard about the genocide, though why they would choose to return home now is unclear. Of course, if they have not severed their telepathic link to the rest of Vulcan, they might be aware of what has happened—

Speculating without data is a waste of energy. Sarek looks up at the face of Commander Arlington and says, "Thank you, Commander. I will relay this message to the Vulcan Council."

The Commander's expression doesn't change but something in his posture shifts slightly. "There's more," he says, and Sarek lowers his hand from the comm control. "The Altorans said that some of the attackers were definitely Vulcans."

So. The conjecture about the _V'tosh ka'tur_ is the correct one.

"As I assumed," Sarek says. The commander lets out an audible sigh.

"It does sound like the group we've been looking for, though if they've gotten violent, that complicates things. The Vulcan High Council might want to rethink their invitation to return."

"I will relay that concern to them as well," Sarek says.

"The Altorans aren't members of the Federation," Commander Arlington says, "but Starfleet is investigating the incident. That route is frequented by lots of traders who _are_ members."

"And the commandeered ship? Does Starfleet have any idea where it is?"

"En route to Vulcan, presumably," Commander Arlington says. "We're sending a ship to intercept. The Altorans were quite insistent that the leader of the group can be reasoned with. Hopefully, this can be resolved without further violence."

As the commander speaks, Sarek struggles to hear over a steady, throbbing mechanical roar in his ears.

_His heartbeat._

"This leader," he says, watching the commander's face closely. "Did the Altorans know his name?"

At once Sarek regrets asking, wishes he could call back the question, but it's too late. The commander glances down at the flimplast in his hand.

"Here it is," he says, but before he can speak, Sarek says, "Sybok."

"Yeah," the commander says, nodding. "That's the name. You know him?"

"And the ship?" Sarek says, ignoring Commander Arlington's question. "The one sent to intercept him?"

But again he knows the answer before the commander can speak. This time, however, he cannot bring himself to say the word, and Commander Arlington says it for him.

" _Enterprise_."

X

_Earth, 31 years ago…_

No matter how early Amanda got to work at the embassy, the junior ambassador was always already there, his presence like a silent rebuke—a wordless comment about her punctuality…or lack of it.

She was rarely early and only occasionally on time, if by _on time_ she meant the schedule she kept posted in her office. Or rather, in Sarek's office, since three months into her employment, she was still sharing his office space.

She set her own schedule and wasn't paid by the hour, so it didn't really matter when she arrived. At least, that was how she thought of it. How the Vulcans thought of it was probably a different matter.

" _The Bay Bridge traffic must have been heavy this morning"_ sounded like a simple observation, but Amanda wasn't fooled. Although Sarek had spoken without looking up from his computer monitor, she glared at him as she passed by on the way to her desk.

"It must be nice to be able to walk 200 meters to work," she said, more annoyed than she would have been if the Bay Bridge traffic had been the reason she was late. As it was, she had no real excuse—a galling admission that edged her voice with sarcasm.

Sarek, however, seemed oblivious.

"Indeed," he said, looking up briefly. "Though I would use the word _efficient_ rather than _nice_."

He turned back to his computer and leaned into the monitor so closely that she was sure he was going to bump his head. He looked so ludicrous, so surprisingly undignified, that Amanda felt her irritation with him evaporate. Instead, she had to stifle a giggle.

"Look," she said, taking a step back towards him, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude."

"There is no offense where none is taken."

Sarek's tone was distant, his attention clearly elsewhere. How many times had she told him that human conversations required eye contact? Or at least a pretense of concern? Her irritation washed back over her.

"That's a relief."

To her surprise, Sarek sat up quickly and looked at her.

"Ms. Grayson," he said, "are you having difficulty this morning?"

She felt her cheeks grow hot. Here she had been mentally scolding Sarek for ignoring human social niceties when she herself had been sarcastic with him—twice. And right when she needed his help, too. She took a deep breath to steady herself.

"I, uh, I apologize," she stammered. "That was uncalled for. If you have a moment, I need to talk to you about something—"

If his gaze was normally intense, suddenly it was more so. Amanda swallowed and let her arms fall to her sides.

"I think I've told you that my sister is in her medical residency—"

"Three times," Sarek said promptly, and Amanda gave a little start. "You have mentioned your sister's residency on three different occasions."

"You were counting," she said simply. Sarek said nothing and she blinked and continued. "Yes, she's doing her pediatric rotation right now and her team has a case you might be able to help with."

"I am not a healer."

"I know that!" She heard the note of irritation creeping back into her voice and she said, "I mean, there _is_ a Vulcan healer who might be able to help, but she's on Vulcan."

"I fail to see what I—"

"Just listen! The patient is a little Vulcan boy with a rare genetic disorder. He and his parents live somewhere near Seattle. Do you know how hard it is to find a Vulcan healer here?"

"Four."

"What?"

"There are four Vulcan healers currently residing on Earth."

"Oh!" Amanda said. "Well, yes. Cecilia did mention that. But apparently the treatment protocols are experimental and only this one healer on Vulcan is willing to try them."

"Then the child should be treated there," Sarek said, starting to turn to his computer.

"That's where you come in," Amanda said, and he paused and turned back to her. "See, there's a problem with the travel permits."

"That seems unlikely," Sarek said. "Medical treatment is a sufficient reason for a visa."

"Actually," Amanda said, stepping closer, "the medical team has been granted their permits. And I think the patient has, too."

She waited a beat and then said, "It's the parents who can't get permission to travel."

"Explain."

Amanda brushed her hair out of her eyes and sighed.

"I can't, really," she said. "I'm not sure Cecilia really understands, either. Just that the Vulcan authorities have restricted the parents' travel."

She saw something flicker in Sarek's expression.

"Criminal activity is rare but not unknown in Vulcan society," he said, looking away. "If they have a criminal record—"

"I don't think so," Amanda said quickly. "The way Cecilia spoke, it sounded like they might be part of a dissident group."

"Vulcan dissidents are not silenced or restricted. We welcome diverse views."

"You sound annoyed."

"I am not annoyed, Ms. Grayson. I am merely stating a fact."

Sarek crossed his arms and sat up so straight that Amanda was certain he wasn't touching the back of his chair. He _was_ annoyed—and if she continued to annoy him, she would be no help to Cecilia and her patient.

"Maybe _dissidents_ was the wrong word," she offered. "Some group not… _welcomed_ …on Vulcan. For some reason."

That same flicker in his expression. She watched him struggle to control his breathing.

"Perhaps," he said at last. "But that does not concern me."

"But it does!" Amanda said. "If you can expedite their travel papers—"

"Ms. Grayson," Sarek said, his tone unusually brusque, "you've indicated that the patient and his medical team are able to travel to seek treatment on Vulcan. Whether or not the parents have been denied permission is immaterial."

Amanda gave an involuntary shiver.

"You're joking."

"I assure you, Vulcans do not joke."

"This is a little boy we're talking about. He needs his parents!"

"You said the patient was a Vulcan child."

"What does that have to do with it!"

Sarek's voice took on the tone of a teacher lecturing an indifferent student.

"You are confusing the behaviors and needs of Vulcans with what a human child might require."

"That's ridiculous!" Amanda said, flushing hard. "You can't tell me that children—all children—especially sick children—don't need their parents!"

"Ms. Grayson," he said, leaning back into his chair, "Vulcan children are never parted from their parents."

As she watched, Amanda saw his eyes flick back to the computer monitor. He was already moving on from this conversation.

"I appreciate the unique relationship Vulcans have with each other," she said, trying to dial back her distress and sound more rational. "How you are… _mentally connected_ …but if you were a parent, you would know that isn't the same thing as being able to reach out and touch a frightened child. This little boy is going to have all sorts of painful tests and procedures, and he will need someone he trusts—someone he cares about—to hold his hand or rub his head. To tell him stories, sing him songs. To bring him ice cream—"

Suddenly Amanda was aware that she was blabbering and she stopped, looking down. Except for the mechanical hum of the air exchanger, the silence was complete.

Ten seconds, twenty. Thirty seconds passed before she dared to look up. Sarek was staring at her.

The moment called for levity. Obviously.

"Don't tell me you don't eat ice cream," she deadpanned.

"No," Sarek said, standing up. "We do not."

And with that, he left the room.

Amanda was flabbergasted. Surely he would return shortly, would allow her to make her apologies—again—before getting back to work.

But she didn't see him the rest of the morning, and when she left that afternoon for her tutoring job at the nearby public school, she stopped at his secretary's desk and asked about him.

"The junior ambassador left hours ago," T'Lin said, her face pinched, disapproving, deliberately intimidating.

With a hitch in her voice, Amanda said, "Do you know what time he's returning?"

T'Lin gave Amanda a long, lingering look before answering.

"Uncertain. His son has been ill and Sarek is going to Vulcan to be with him until his recovery."

She sniffed loudly and turned her head, a dismissal, though Amanda ignored it.

"His son? He has a son?"

"I believe I said that," T'Lin said, glancing up.

The knot that had settled in her stomach hours ago bloomed into real nausea. Amanda put her hand on T'Lin's desk and bent forward until she could catch her breath.

"Sorry," she said at last, slipping her free hand around the strap of her satchel. "I didn't—I mean, his son has been ill? Is it serious?"

"That is not your concern," T'Lin said, shoving an envelope across the desk. "He left this for you."

"What is it?" Amanda began, picking up the envelope.

"The travel permits you requested," T'Lin said, more disapproval in her voice. "For the two _V'tosh ka'tur_."

XX

_On the Altoran ship, present day…_

"Have you eaten?"

Davara sits back on her haunches, a metal tray held out with one hand. Sybok looks at it briefly before shaking his head.

"You should eat," the tall, thin girl says.

"Have _you_ eaten?" Sybok asks, and Davara gives a rueful grin, like someone found out in a lie.

"I am not hungry," she says, and Sybok bobs his head to the side, inviting her to sit next to him.

"So," he says as she settles cross-legged on the little corner of the cargo bay that he's cadged out for himself, "what should we talk about—that is, while we're not eating?"

He looks closely at the girl beside him—her dark hair pulled back from her face, her upswept eyebrows knit in concentration.

"This isn't how you thought it would be, is it?" she says.

Her gaze makes him uncomfortable and he looks away.

"No," he says at last. "I did not want anyone to get hurt."

"Mother says that sometimes it is necessary to cause pain."

"Spoken like a good Rihannsu," Sybok says, not without some bitterness. At his side, Davara straightens and he turns to meet her eyes. "I'm not disagreeing," he says. "But it sometimes makes life more difficult."

For a moment the only sounds are the steady thrum of the ship engines and the indistinct murmur of other people sitting around the perimeter of the cargo bay. Altogether 79 Rihannsu and Vulcan _V'tosh ka'tur_ make up the group, and most, like Sybok, have strung ropes and hung blankets in the cargo bay for a measure of privacy.

"What's going to happen now?" Davara's voice is uncharacteristically anxious, her arms clamped tightly to her side.

"You mean when we get to Vulcan? That depends on the welcoming committee."

"You are teasing me."

"You used to like it when I teased you."

Davara leans heavily into Sybok's shoulder and gives him a nudge.

"Mother says it is what Vulcans do," she says, and Sybok laughs so loudly that he attracts the unwanted attention of a woman nearby trying to settle a sleepy child.

"Not most Vulcans," he says quietly, nodding at the woman in apology. "My father, for instance, has no sense of humor at all."

The mention of Sarek dampens his mood and he frowns.

"You are still teasing me," Davara says. "How could you have a sense of humor if your father did not?"

Again Sybok laughs—but before the woman with the child can say anything, he raises his hands as if in surrender.

"I got it from my mother," he says softly. "She was always making me laugh."

"But you said your mother died when you were a baby."

Davara picks idly at the knee of her trousers as she speaks. With a deft motion, Sybok captures her hand in his and squeezes her fingers before letting them go, a familiar gesture of affection.

"The woman who gave birth to me, yes," he says. "But my mother—my _real_ mother—is the wife of my father. The humans have a name for it—step-mother—and when I was small, I thought it meant that I was supposed to walk in her footsteps."

He pauses then, calling up an image of himself as a boy taking long strides behind Amanda as she worked in the garden or moved about the kitchen preparing a meal. Months had gone by before she figured out why he was so careful to place his feet where hers had been.

"Like you and me," Davara says, interrupting his reverie, and he turns to her in surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"You are my step-father?" She asks it as a question and Sybok shrugs.

"I suppose I am," he says, "though I have never thought of myself that way. You are my daughter, even if you do not carry my genes."

"And I want to follow in your footsteps," she says, uncrossing her legs and wiggling her right foot several inches into the air. She grins up at Sybok slyly.

"You are indeed my daughter," he says. "You have my sense of humor."

He reaches out to squeeze her fingers again when the intercom squawks loudly, raising the hair on the back of his neck.

"Sybok," Raska'ot says, the harshness of his voice competing with the static of the intercom. "You are needed on the bridge."

Standing up quickly, Sybok pulls his cloak around him.

"Is something wrong?" he says, aiming his words into the air.

Another burst of static and the sleepy child nearby cries out fretfully as Sybok heads to the door of the cargo bay.

"A ship," Raska'ot says, "is approaching. From the Federation. The _Enterprise_."


	6. Overtures

**Chapter Six: Overtures**

**Disclaimer: I own little anywhere, and almost nothing here.**

"This is James T. Kirk of the Federation starship _Enterprise_. Stand down and prepare to be boarded."

Nyota presses the comm bud tightly to her ear. No response. She feels the captain glancing in her direction and she looks up and shakes her head.

"Altoran cargo ship _D'Larii_ ," Kirk says, enunciating each word, "this is the _Enterprise_. Prepare to—"

Without warning, Nyota finds herself pitched forward and she grabs the communications console as the _Enterprise_ rocks suddenly.

"They have discharged their particle phaser," Spock says from his station. Nyota glances at him briefly and sees his fingers flying over the indicator tabs.

"Damage?" the captain asks, looking over his shoulder at his first officer.

"Negligible," Spock says. "But they are powering up again."

"Uhura," Captain Kirk says, motioning toward her, "is that channel open?"

Glancing at her console, she says, "I think so, Captain. The transceiver appears to be working."

The ship jerks again and Nyota sees the captain brace himself against the arms of his chair.

"Plot a course out of their phaser range," Kirk says. "I don't want to return fire unless we have to."

"Aye, Keptin," the young Russian at navigation replies.

"Incoming," Spock intones, and almost anti-climactically, the deck shakes, though not as hard as before.

"Move us out," Kirk says as he crosses his arms across his chest.

"Moving out," Sulu says from the helm, and Nyota feels, rather than hears, the engines of the ship power up.

"Altoran ship _D'Larii_ ," Kirk says, "stand down or we will return fire. You are outmanned and outgunned."

"They are arming their phase cannon," Spock says, and Nyota darts a glance at Kirk. Most cargo transports have some sort of defensive weapons—particle phasers, usually—though a few are also equipped with phase cannons or ion disruptors. A well-aimed shot from a phase cannon can cause considerable damage, even on a heavily shielded starship.

"Sulu—" Kirk begins, but the helmsman anticipates the order and says, "Weapons targeted."

"Phase cannon only."

"Aye, Captain."

The _Enterprise's_ phasers whine briefly and Spock says, "Their phase cannon has been disabled."

"Are we within transporter range?"

Nyota glances down at her console and notes the distance to the Altoran ship. The question, however, is a tactical one, and Sulu answers it.

"Distance to the transport is 12,000 kilometers," he says.

"Move us within range," Kirk says, and again Nyota feels the thrum of the _Enterprise's_ impulse engines.

"They're retreating," Spock says. "And they're recharging their particle phasers."

"This is ridiculous." The captain runs his hand through his hair and says, "Uhura, patch me through."

She nods to let him know that the connection is live and he says, "Altoran ship _D'Larii_ , if you don't stand down, we will disable your engines by force. You can either cooperate with the Federation, or we will board you—"

"The Federation has no jurisdiction over us."

The voice is husky and harsh, the words hard to decipher over the static. Nyota toggles on the amplifier and adjusts the filter until the static recedes to a minor hiss.

"This is James T. Kirk of the Federation starship _Enterprise_."

"We have no dealings with the Federation," the voice says, this time more clearly. The characteristic sibilance of the consonants indicates the speaker's origins—Rihannsu, one of the worker caste. Not a military group, then. She glances up and meets Spock's eyes. _Indeed._

"You attacked the Altoran crew," the captain says, "and commandeered their ship."

"That is between us and the Altorans," the voice says.

"You fired on a Federation starship," Kirk says, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice. "That makes it a Federation issue."

"Captain Kirk."

A new voice, this one a deep baritone.

And not Rihannsu. Vulcan, speaking Standard the same way Spock does, with minute hints that show it is not his first language—an oddly stressed syllable at the end of certain words, an occasional rising tone when a falling note is more common.

Nyota shivers involuntarily.

Only hours ago she and the bridge crew had sat in the conference room being briefed on Starfleet's latest intelligence about the attackers of the commandeered Altoran ship. Because of Spock's conversation with Selek before they left orbit, she knew more than most—that some of the attackers were probably Vulcan _V'tosh ka'tur_. She also knew that one of those Vulcans might be Sybok.

Before the captain can reply, the Vulcan voice continues.

"We will return this ship to its owners when we reach our destination. At that time, we are prepared to compensate them for any inconvenience—"

"You left casualties behind," Kirk says. "You might find compensation hard to offer."

The slight hiss of static—the captain looks in Nyota's direction and she lifts an eyebrow, a signal that the connection is still open.

"We regret that," the voice says at last, "but it was…necessary. And we fired on you only after you threatened to board us."

Kirk turns suddenly to Nyota and makes a slashing motion to this throat. With a deft flick of her thumb, she cuts the transmission.

"Spock," he says, swiveling around in his chair, "how many are aboard?"

"Sensors show 79 biosigns, most concentrated in the cargo bay."

"If we beam a security detail to the bridge—"

"We have no way of knowing if the crew are armed," Spock says evenly, his voice not betraying the upheaval Nyota knows he is feeling.

"We could beam a sonic disruptor over first," Sulu says. "Or we could target their power coils and throw them in the dark."

"A sonic disruptor has a limited range," Spock says, "and targeting their power coils would disable their life support."

"Now that you've told me what _won't_ work," Kirk says, "give me some options that _will_."

In a distant part of her consciousness Nyota feels Spock coming to a conclusion, like watching a wave race toward the shore. Her heart pounds—though from her own fear or from his fierce determination, she isn't sure.

"I can beam over and attempt to negotiate."

"Spock, you can't—"

"Captain, I may be the only person who _can_ negotiate."

What he doesn't say is enormous. That being a Vulcan—like many of the people on the ship—gives him unique leverage. That if Sybok is, in fact, one of the attackers, Spock might be able to reason with him when no one else can.

"Unless," Spock adds, "using force is your first choice."

Kirk blinks slowly and turns his head, looking away.

"You know it isn't," he says. A beat, and then he adds, "I'm going with you."

"Your presence," Spock says quickly, "would be a distraction."

From her vantage point on the bridge, Nyota can see both men—Spock perched on the edge of his chair, waiting for Kirk to catch up with his reasoning. Kirk's mouth opens to respond and then he exhales a breath instead.

Across their bond, she feels Spock's relief that the captain understands. The Rihannsu and _V'tosh ka'tur_ are more likely to deal with a Vulcan, someone whose ancestors crawled out of the same primordial soup. _The stubborn innate clannishness of species across the galaxy…_

Spock stands up and motions to Lieutenant Hannity to replace him at the science station.

"I'll alert the transporter room—" he says, but a series of beeps interrupts him.

"Captain," Nyota says, "we're being hailed."

"On speakers."

"Captain Kirk," the Vulcan voice says, silky and low, "if I can convince you that we will make restitution to the Altorans for any trouble we have caused them, will you let us continue on our way? We have children aboard, and I do not think you want to be responsible for harming them."

Like being in a dream unable to move, Nyota watches Jim Kirk's expression cloud over, sees his body shift in his chair as he casts a glance toward Spock. He's going to let Spock beam onto the ship alone—she knows this as clearly as she knows anything—but like a dreamer she stays motionless and mute and cannot call out her objections.

Would not, even if she could.

"I'm sending someone over," Kirk says as Spock takes a step to the turbolift, but the static crackles so loudly that Nyota scurries to dial it down.

"Not necessary," the Vulcan voice says. "I will come to you."

All eyes are on the captain. Spock stands like a statue at the turbolift door.

"Alright," Kirk says slowly. "We'll bring you aboard immediately."

Coming to his feet, he turns to Nyota and says, "Tell security to meet me in the transporter room."

With a few keystrokes she sends the message and looks up to tell the captain that they're on the way but he's already at the turbolift behind Spock, Sulu sliding seamlessly into the captain's chair.

"Don't take your eyes off that ship," Sulu tells the ensign who settles into the vacated seat behind the helm. "This feels an awful lot like a trap."

X

"I thought you might want to know," Amanda said, "that Cecilia says her patient is responding well to treatment on Vulcan."

The dining area of the Vulcan embassy was filled with small café tables and chairs, most occupied by workers eating silently while reading their padds. At one of the tables beside a window, Sarek sat, a mug of tea before him. Amanda stood in front of him like someone at attention, her hands in her pockets to hide the fact that they were shaking.

"He makes me nervous," she had complained the night before when she talked to Cecilia on the comm. "And I blame you!"

"Me!" Cecilia protested. "What did I do?"

"Ever since I asked him to get those travel papers, I've felt odd around him. Like I owe him something."

" _I_ owe him something," Cecila said dismissively. "Kalir and his parents owe him something. _You_ don't."

"It's just that—I mean, it was an awkward conversation, asking for special favors."

She heard Cecilia blow out a burst of air.

"I've never known you to have trouble talking before!"

Amanda was wasting her time trying to explain—partly, she realized later, because she hadn't given Cecilia all the details. Or rather, not all of the truth. The truth was she had hectored Sarek unjustly about what it meant to be a parent—she with no children of her own, lecturing a man forced to live apart from his son.

She hadn't known at the time that he had a son, of course. But that didn't make her feel any more justified in retrospect.

While he was away the following week she had gone to work each day with a heavy heart and an anxious stomach, wanting to apologize and dreading doing so. By the time Sarek returned from Vulcan—from visiting with his son who had broken his foot in some sort of rigorous physical training—Amanda was so jittery around him that she could hardly make eye contact.

Now two days had slipped by and here she was, testing the conversational waters with the message from Cecilia, aware that she was garnering unwanted attention from several of the diners. Sarek apparently noticed, too. He lifted his hand and turned his palm toward the chair opposite, an invitation to sit.

 _Not_ what she wanted to do.

"Are you sure?" she said, her hand poised above the back of the chair.

"Please," he said evenly, and she sat down. "Tea, Ms. Grayson?"

She shook her head a shade too emphatically.

"No!" she said. "I don't want to interrupt what you are doing. I was walking past and saw you here and thought….well, I wanted to tell you that the little boy is responding to the treatment. So, thank you. For everything."

She started to rise again but some motion of Sarek's hand—some flutter of his fingertips—suggested he wanted to speak. She sat back down.

"Ms. Grayson," he said, his gaze making her distinctly uncomfortable, "since I returned from Vulcan, you have seemed…hesitant in your actions. Reticent in your speech. If I am doing something that distresses you—"

"Oh, no!" she blurted out. An elderly Vulcan at the next table looked up with undisguised disapproval. Amanda lowered her voice and said, "You haven't done anything! I'm just…sorry…that I went off on a rant before you left. I'm embarrassed."

"A rant?" Sarek's brows were knit in obvious confusion.

"About being a parent?" Amanda said, her tone lilting into a question. "I harangued you about what good parents should do for their sick children?"

She watched an unreadable expression wash over Sarek's face.

"Ah," he said, tipping his chin up and raising one eyebrow. "So you did."

Amanda felt her face flush. "I'm sorry—"

"It was a timely reminder," Sarek said, cupping his hands around his tea mug. "One I needed to hear."

Amanda flushed again. Suddenly the intensity of Sarek's gaze was too hard to bear and she looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

"Well," she said, "I had no right to be the one to give it."

"If not you," Sarek said, lifting the cup to his lips, "then who?"

The loneliness of the statement was as shocking as the implied intimacy.

But it had the desired effect. When they returned to his office a few minutes later, she sighed in relief. The temporary awkwardness was gone.

Not that it didn't return at unexpected times.

For the next few weeks she worked mostly alone, compiling a list of frequently misunderstood Standard slang terms, then designing a series of poorly attended discussion forums. When Sarek offered to help her tweak the content and format, she reluctantly agreed, and they slipped into a habit of eating a mid-day meal together to discuss their joint projects.

At first the meals consisted of the simple fare available in the embassy commissary, but gradually they began leaving the compound more often—ostensibly to cater to Amanda's more adventurous taste buds, but partly to avoid being overheard by other Vulcans.

Not that they talked about anything other Vulcans shouldn't have overheard. Their conversations were always professional, or at least for the most part.

But something about being tucked away in a tiny restaurant watching someone unfamiliar with the intricacies of Terran cuisine was so enjoyable that Amanda found herself drifting from strictly professional to somewhat personal in their conversations.

Today, for instance—laughing at Sarek's startled expression when he tasted wasabi for the first time.

"I once dated a man who wouldn't eat anything but sushi," she said, holding up her chopsticks as a tutorial for Sarek. "Breakfast, lunch, dinner…midnight snack. That's how I learned to use chopsticks so well."

Sarek glanced from her hand to his own and mimed her motions. Or tried to. His fingers slipped and he dropped one of his sticks onto his plate.

"Here," Amanda said, reaching across the table. With a practiced motion she picked up the fallen chopstick and pressed it into Sarek's open palm.

He jerked back as if burned.

"I'm sorry!" she spluttered, baffled by the heat rushing from her head to her core. "I forgot about—"

But Sarek seemed strangely focused on maneuvering his chopsticks.

They ate the rest of the meal in near silence—Sarek picking up each successive bite more surely than the one before, Amanda trying to sort through the turmoil she felt.

Like most people, one of the first things she had learned about Vulcans was that they were touch telepaths, that physical contact was an unwanted intrusion. One night at a party she had listened as a young woman studying at the Vulcan Science Academy described what it felt like to brush her fingers across a Vulcan's skin—an electric tingle, a jolt of heat. And most outrageous of all, spatial disorientation as the mental connections flared together briefly.

At the time Amanda hadn't believed it. She wasn't sure she did even now.

But what she did know—what she realized during her momentary lapse of judgment—was not what it felt like to touch a Vulcan in the abstract, but what it felt like to touch Sarek in particular.

If she felt heat or electricity or some mental bond, she couldn't say, perhaps because her touch had been too fleeting, too purposeful. What she _had_ felt was pleasure—not emanating from him in some mysterious Vulcan way—but from within herself.

She had used his shambling about with the chopsticks as an excuse to do something she had wanted to do for a long time.

_When had talking and working together stopped being enough?_

Had Sarek sensed anything through her touch? The idea that she might have given herself away made her mouth dry and choked her when she tried to continue eating. When the meal was over, she was relieved to be able to get up and walk the three blocks to the embassy, her hands tucked neatly and safely behind her back.

She darted surreptitious glances at him as they re-entered the main building at the embassy compound and headed down the hall to his office. If he noticed her uneasiness he gave no indication, and by the time she was resettled at her desk, she had convinced herself that the touch had been a momentary loss of control, nothing more, something Sarek had hardly noted.

Or so she thought.

"I have been meaning to ask you something," Sarek said later that afternoon. "I am curious about human sexuality. My research indicates that human mating practices vary considerably, from arranged marriages to casual encounters without the expectation of any further contact. Do you yourself have a preference?"

"I beg your pardon!"

She was horrified. Obviously she had given away _something_.

"Human sexuality is a private issue," she said, covering her embarrassment with an exaggerated bluster. "We generally do not discuss our…preferences…with just anyone."

Sarek looked up, an unmistakable look of surprise on his face.

"Indeed," he said. "I had not noticed that sort of reticence. If anything, much of your literature, your music, your dramatizations involve sex—"

"Yes, I know," Amanda said, frantically casting about for something to redirect his attention. "But it's not like Vulcans are any more forthcoming! It isn't fair to ask me for information you yourself aren't willing to offer!"

She couldn't be sure but she thought he flushed then. Now _he_ was embarrassed. The thought was oddly comforting.

He took a breath and laced his fingers together.

"Agreed," he said, blinking slowly. "In the interest of fairness, if you have questions—"

She did, in fact, have quite a few, but she could see what the offer was costing him.

Besides, she had struck up a friendly acquaintanceship with a young Vulcan woman who worked at the front receptionist desk. At least once a week she and T'Lanna bought drinks from the street vendors on Marina Boulevard and walked in the park for exercise. If Sarek knew what T'Lanna had already told her, he would have been shocked.

"Thank you, but not right now," she said, fidgeting with her personal padd. She hazarded a glance and saw that he was looking at her closely. "Perhaps later," she said, setting the padd on her desk.

The rest of the afternoon she felt strangely discomfited. As she worked at her desk she watched him working at his—focused, as usual, on his computer monitor, seemingly oblivious to her. Yet little hints in his motions, in the cant of his head, gave him away. When she made a noise—any noise—he paused so slightly that at first she thought she was imagining it. When she took a deep breath, she saw his back straighten and his hand shake.

"Am I bothering you?" she finally asked and he darted a look in her direction and said, "Not at all, Ms. Grayson," so swiftly that she suspected he was either lying to her or to himself.

She was too ashamed of her breach of decorum to tell anyone, not even Cecilia who was often her confessor. Instead she resolved to _get back to business_ , to treat her time at the embassy as what it was, a part-time job, and stop reading more into her interactions with Sarek than were there.

For the next few weeks she successfully steered their conversations into the well-worn rut of work-related topics—the upcoming gathering of Beta Quadrant signatories that Vulcan would host, a language tutorial for the newest adjutants.

But when her sister Cecilia called to announce her pregnancy, Amanda couldn't contain her excitement. Sarek was already at his desk when she breezed in one morning with two paper coffee cups in her hands.

"I'm going to have a nephew!" she cooed, setting one of the cups on Sarek's desk. "I'm finally going to be an aunt!"

Picking up the cup, Sarek said, "And this announcement requires a ritual beverage?"

Instead of answering, Amanda laughed.

"You are aware that I do not drink coffee," he said, tilting his head and watching her from the corner of his eye.

"Tea," she said, pointing to the cup. "Chamomile. The barista told me he has a Vulcan customer who drinks it."

She watched as he took a tentative sip.

"Do you like it?"

"It is…different," he said, taking another sip. And then almost as an afterthought, he said, "Thank you."

"To be honest," Amanda said, "it's not my favorite tea, but I have to get used to it while Cecilia's pregnant."

"I do not understand."

"It's herbal tea. You know, caffeine free. Cecilia's having to give up her morning coffee while she's pregnant. It's not really good for the baby."

"How will your giving up coffee," Sarek said, "benefit a child?"

"Cecilia's my _sister_ ," Amanda said as if that explained everything. Sarek's expression showed it didn't. "See, if she has to give up coffee, I'll give it up, too—you know, so she won't have to suffer alone."

Busying herself for a few moments by turning on her computer and putting away her jacket, Amanda was startled to look up and see Sarek staring at her, his cup still in his hand.

"What is it?"

"I was unaware," he said, "that human families shared that sort of empathic connection."

"What do you mean?"

"You feel your sister's emotions."

"Well, in a way. I understand what she's feeling. She tells me."

"But it is important to her that you deprive yourself of caffeine while _she_ does."

Amanda let out a puff of air.

"When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous. I'm not giving up caffeine because Cecilia _wants_ me to, but…well, to be mindful of what she's going through. It keeps her in my thoughts."

"Because she is your family."

"It can't be so different for you," she said. "Don't you do things to keep your son in mind? Maybe look at pictures of him?"

"I have no pictures of Sybok," Sarek said, setting his cup back on his desk.

"None?"

"He lives with his grandmother," Sarek said, his expression hardening. "My contact with him is…limited."

What a world of hurt, Amanda thought, though he had rarely spoken directly of his son, and she had been reluctant to bring up something that caused him obvious distress.

"I'm sorry," she said simply, and Sarek lifted one shoulder a fraction, a Vulcan equivalent of a shrug.

"Pictures are unnecessary," he said, turning back to his computer. "Most Vulcans have eidetic memories."

"Meaning you don't forget anything?"

"Meaning we cannot," he said, looking back at her, unmistakable anguish in his eyes. "There is a difference."

X X

"Take this," Tri'eska says, pressing a small curved dagger in the palm of his hand. Sybok knows that ever since Raska'ot called him to the bridge when the Federation ship came into view, she's been keeping watch, standing informal guard in the hallway. He chucks his hand under her chin and takes a moment to lock his gaze with hers.

"I will be alright," he says carefully, and she nods and pulls away.

This small cargo ship actually has two transporter pads—an industrial one for moving large equipment in the cargo bay, and a single pad in a recessed area of the hall near the bridge. Raska'ot is standing there, already talking softly to another Rihannsu.

"I will go first," Sybok says. Raska'ot frowns and meets Sybok's gaze. "I will. Go. First," Sybok says slowly. Raska'ot steps away from the transporter pad.

As he does, his long cloak sways to his motion and Sybok catches the glint of something at Raska'ot's side. Raska'ot follows his gaze.

Pulling back his cloak, Raska'ot shows the Altoran disrupter he has strapped under his arm.

"I've set it to overload," he says with a feral grin. "If they try anything, I'll blow a hole in their hull."

Sybok isn't surprised, though it does complicate things.

"Only if I give the word," he says, but he knows—and Raska'ot knows—that his words are empty. If Raska'ot once listened to Sybok's counsel, he's far more interested in following his own impulses now.

Sybok steps up on the transporter pad and motions with his hand to the young Vulcan woman standing at the control panel set in the wall. The familiar fizziness at the edge of his vision that signals the beginning of transport—the moment of vertigo—and suddenly he is tottering on the raised dais of a starship.

The room is dimly lit but Sybok sees immediately that four uniformed officers are holding side arms aimed at him. He lifts his hands in the universal symbol of surrender and takes a step forward off the pad.

"Stop right there."

The speaker is a young human male, also in uniform but not armed. His seriousness of purpose suggests he is in charge, and Sybok takes a guess and says, "Captain Kirk?"

"If you stand aside," the captain says, waving his hand, "we can beam up the rest of your party."

"There are no other members of my party," Sybok says, and the young captain looks back over his shoulder to a man sitting behind a glass partition at the control console.

"They're signaling one more to beam up, Captain."

"Don't," Sybok says. "I must speak to you alone."

He reads Kirk's struggle in his expression—watches him weigh whether or not to trust him.

"Tell them we are having transporter trouble," the captain says, and the man at the control says, "Aye, sir."

Some motion to the side catches his attention then, another officer standing quietly in the shadows. Sybok takes a second look and is startled to see a Vulcan move forward.

"Sybok."

A question as much as a statement, and Sybok feels his heart begin to race, feels a heaviness on his shoulders as if someone has placed a great weight there.

"Do I know you?" he says, but even as he does, he feels something inside him leap out in recognition. "Spock?"

"I am."

For a moment Sybok is nailed to the floor, unable to move. But with two long strides, he closes the distance between them and they stand face to face.

"How—why are you here?"

"I am the first officer of the _Enterprise_ ," Spock says. "I think you know why we are here."


	7. Intruders

**Chapter Seven: Intruders**

**Disclaimer: Don't own, don't profit.**

In the dim lighting of the transporter room, Sybok's eyes are black, his gaze impenetrable. Standing this close, Spock can see the faint line of a thin scar etched on Sybok's cheek, an exaggerated nob on the bridge of Sybok's nose suggesting that it has been broken more than once.

 _A violent life._ The idea is so disturbing that Spock instinctively mentally reaches out, searching for the connection he used to feel with his brother.

_Nothing. Just as he has felt nothing from Sybok for years._

From the corner of his eye, Spock sees Captain Kirk shift his posture.

"This is your brother?"

Spock nods curtly. Kirk casts a long glance at Sybok, and then with a sudden motion of his chin, points toward the door of the transporter room.

"The conference room might be a better place to talk."

"Captain," Spock says, casting a look toward the security detail. Kirk picks up his meaning immediately.

"Search him," the captain says.

As the nearest security guard takes a step forward, Sybok raises his hands and says, "A dagger. In my front right pocket."

The guard fishes out the dagger and pats Sybok down carefully before nodding up at Kirk. Something about the dagger catches Spock's attention and he takes it from the guard, tipping it up slowly so that the light cascades down the edge of the blade. Tiny grooves, almost too small to see, are etched on the handle. _Rihannsu._

He holds out the dagger to Kirk as they make their way down the corridor toward the conference room on Deck Two. The four security guards flank Sybok as he follows.

His expression darkening, Kirk examines the knife.

"You have Romulans on your ship?"

"Does that matter?"

"It might," he says, darting a glance at Spock before leading the way into the conference room.

Going directly to a chair at the head of the long oblong table, the captain makes an opening chess move of sorts, establishing his control and positioning himself to see everyone else while facing the door.

Sybok hesitates for a moment and then sits at the opposite end of the table—also a chess move of sorts.

Spock looks from one man to the other before lowering himself into a chair to Sybok's left . The security detail fans out in the room.

"Why did you steal the Altoran ship?" Kirk asks abruptly, but if his intention is to catch Sybok off-guard, his strategy is ineffective. Sybok sits back and rests his hands on the arms of the chair, a look of mild bemusement on his face.

"We did not steal it," he says. "We assured the Altorans that our need for the ship was greater than theirs and we offered to compensate them for it."

"You took it against their will," Kirk says. "And two Altorans were badly injured in your assault."

Sybok's cavalier expression blackens immediately into a look of undisguised grief. If he had been skeptical before, Spock is convinced that Sybok must be one of the _V'tosh ka'tur_.

"You have not answered the larger question," Spock says, and Sybok snaps his head in his direction.

"Why now, you mean. And to do what."

Not questions, but statements. Spock waits for him to continue.

" _Now_ because our crops were going to fail," Sybok says. "As they did last season, and the season before that. We had no more reserves to get us to the next harvest. If we had stayed where we were, we would have starved."

"You could have asked for help," Kirk says. "Could have arranged for legal transport."

"With what? We have no currency, Captain. We are poor settlers. No one would want to help us. We are exiles from our own worlds, Rihannsu running from political persecution and Vulcans running from social persecution."

"Then—"

"Why did we need a ship? To go home. To Vulcan. Because we are tired of running. Because the Vulcan ideal of diversity should include us, too, even the Rihannsu, even if we disagree on what it means to be a Vulcan."

Spock feels Kirk's eyes on him. Ever since Selek appeared in his quarters and mentioned Sybok by name, Spock has imagined this moment—has, if he is honest, dreaded it with such intensity that it has troubled his infrequent dreams.

He catches Kirk's gaze and lets out a breath he wasn't aware he had been holding.

"Vulcan was destroyed 18 months ago," Spock says.

There. Bare facts, stripped of their emotional overtones. He takes another breath and watches Sybok react.

A frown first, and a twitch of his head.

"You are lying."

"You know I would not lie to you," Spock says. "I was there when it happened."

The color drains from Sybok's face and he makes a garbled sound, like someone drowning.

"I do not believe you! This is a trick to get me to surrender the Altoran ship!"

"No," Kirk says, but Sybok doesn't seem to hear him. Instead, he stands up abruptly, his fists clenched at his side.

"Show me!" he says, and with a single bound he is around the end of the table, leaning over and pressing his fingers into Spock's face like hot irons.

"Show me!" Sybok says again.

 _No,_ Spock protests wordlessly, but even as he does he feels his resistance falling away, Sybok knocking aside his shields like someone brushing away a spider web.

 _Show me now,_ Sybok says, this time with more sorrow than anger, and against his will Spock feels his boots slipping on the scree of the cliff outside the katric arc, smells the sulfur in the air as the ground buckles and heaves, hears the Vulcan elders behind him stumbling over the small rocks in their path.

He tries to exit the memory - _I do not wish to see this_ \- but Sybok is remorseless.

 _You cannot leave,_ Sybok says, and slowly Spock turns and looks for his mother, feels Sybok using his eyes to watch her standing at the edge of the crumbling rock.

His heart thrumming in his side, Spock reaches out his hand to her, sees the stricken look on her face.

The wind whips up—he blinks as the dust swirls around him—and then she is gone.

 _Mother!_ he calls, but unlike before, this time he hears Sybok calling out in concert with him.

And this time he feels something else, too, something more—Sybok's own guilt coupled with his own.

 _I should have been here,_ Sybok cries out, and for an instant Spock's eyes are open and Sybok is staring into his face, his expression contorted in grief and pain, beads of sweat across his brow. Closing his eyes again, Spock tries to push away from Sybok's mental contact but his arms and legs are heavy and useless, his head throbbing.

 _Show me!_ Sybok says, and too exhausted to resist, Spock reveals the next memories as well—the hasty reconnaissance of the _Narada_ , the disastrous miscalculations that landed him and Jim Kirk in the middle of the crowded cargo bay, the dawning awareness of the alternative timeline, the frantic destruction of the drill.

Nero's final defiance—his ship breaking apart in the singularity.

 _There's more_ , Sybok says, catching glimpses of Selek in Spock's mind, but Spock fends him off.

 _Stop_ , Spock says, too weary to speak out loud. But Sybok is like a deaf man.

 _Show me!_ he insists wildly. His fury and helplessness roll over Spock like a wave.

 _You should have saved her!_ Sybok howls. _You should have been the one who died_!

The pressure in Spock's head, on his face, is almost intolerable. His breath ragged, his lungs on fire, he parts his lips to speak.

 _Yes,_ he longs to say. _I should have saved her. I should have died._

But his words come out strangled and unintelligible.

Opening his eyes, he sees the end of a phaser pistol looming close and hears the telltale whine as it engages. The world lights up like old holos of 20th century nuclear tests on Earth—the light so bright that he closes his eyes again, the heat scorching his face—and through it all, Sybok's mournful cry as their connection is broken.

He starts to stand but his knees turn to water and the floor rushes up to meet him.

And then, nothing.

X

"Are you alright?" Amanda asked. "You look a little pale."

In fact, Sarek had a headache—a nagging ache behind his eyes that had started around lunchtime and threatened to bloom into something more debilitating. For a moment he debated whether to admit as much to Amanda. The odds were high that if he did, she would call off their evening plans—attending a rare performance of Andorian symphonic music right after work.

Not that he would mind missing the music. A skilled musician himself, Sarek appreciated the artistry and tonal qualities of many different composers and performers, but Andorian harmonies were exceedingly discordant and frankly unappealing.

What he _would_ mind missing was an opportunity to socialize with Amanda away from the office. Only recently had she asked him to call her by her first name—a symbol, Sarek knew, not just that their relationship had become less formal, but that she was inviting him to explore what it might become in the future.

On one hand he was glad to spend more time with her. Her company was almost always pleasant; her intellect was keen and her wit was sharp—even though he was often the target of it.

But a larger part of him was cautious about implying that the relationship could be more. His life was fraught with complications enough—the impermanence of his posting on Earth, for example, and his responsibility for Sybok.

Not to mention the difficulties of interspecies communications. Among other things.

Sex, for one. Whether it was desirable. Or even possible.

Lately he found himself drifting into such ruminations when his mind wasn't sufficiently busy. No wonder he had a headache.

"Nothing an analgesic will not alleviate," he said. "We can stop by my apartment on the way out of the compound to get something before the concert."

The Vulcan embassy was a maze of buildings. The main hall and meeting areas were tall glass structures that looked out over the bay on one side and Ghiradelli Square on the other. Tucked behind an ornate enclosure was a low apartment building where most of the staff lived.

Sarek spent little time there and it showed. As he keyed in the number sequence on the pad outside the door of his apartment, he was aware that Amanda was examining the bare walkway. To the left and right were other apartments with more ornamental entrance ways—large potted plants lining the walks, decorative wind chimes hanging from the eaves.

The door unlatched with a loud click and he pushed it open, standing aside for Amanda to precede him. He watched her closely as she did, her eyes roving around the spartan living area. Suddenly his life here seemed impoverished and spare to a degree that embarrassed him.

"I will only be a moment," he said, heading down the short corridor on the left to his sleeping and bathing area where he kept his personal effects.

"That's good," Amanda called after him. "I wouldn't want anyone to think we were up to something."

The bottle of analgesic capsules was not where he had assumed it would be, in the storage cabinet in the bathing area. For a moment he stood flummoxed.

If not here, then where?

He didn't have a clue. It was true that he rarely had headaches and even rarer still that he used analgesics—but it was unlike him not to remember where he kept things.

He headed back down the corridor.

"Is everything okay?" Amanda asked as he passed through the living area on his way to the kitchen. _A glass of water_. It might not help his headache, but he was feeling hot and thirsty. He heard her footsteps as she followed him.

There on the counter was the bottle of analgesics.

"I was looking for this," he said as she walked up behind him. He picked up the bottle and held it in his hand, like someone examining an exotic plant. The only reasonable explanation was that he had left it here—and recently, too.

Dimly he was aware that Amanda was opening the cabinet over the counter and pulling out a cup, was stepping swiftly to the sink and turning on the faucet, was standing so closely to him that he could smell the curious mix of citrus and floral notes that he had come to associate with her.

"Here," she said, looking from his hand to his face, and he felt the cool glass pressed into his palm. "Drink this."

He lifted the glass and took a sip, all the while keeping his eyes locked on Amanda's. Suddenly the room was so stuffy that he felt perspiration beading up under his high collar.

"Here," she said again, this time tugging the glass from him. As she did, he let his fingertips brush her arm—an intentional intrusion, he knew, but as she looked up at him and he heard her breath hitch, he knew that she welcomed the contact. Her hand snaked up and she stroked his cheek with her cool fingers.

And then to his astonishment, she leaned up and brushed her lips against his.

He knew enough about humans to recognize a kiss and what it represented. Or he thought he did.

Amanda leaned back and said, "There. How's your headache?"

"My headache?"

"A human custom," she said, a smile turning up the corners of her mouth. "When someone has a hurt spot, we kiss it."

"I see," he said, not seeing at all. The kiss was not a sexual overture? His information was faulty, then.

On the other hand, it had been pleasant, regardless of the reason. Tilting his chin down, he said, "My head still hurts. Perhaps you need to do that again."

This time he followed Amanda's lead and closed his eyes as she pressed her lips to his. Her mouth was soft and cool, and when he felt her lips part slightly and her tongue tease forward, he reached for her hand and ran his fingers along hers.

At once he felt her presence slip into his mind—amusement and wonder radiating from her in equal measure.

He maneuvered his free hand against the small of her back, steadying himself by pressing her to him. This close he could hear her heartbeat speeding up, could feel her knee bumping his own. To his surprise, he realized he was becoming aroused—and that she knew it and shared it.

"Amanda," he said, pulling back slightly. He let go of her hand and felt instantly bereft as their link dissipated.

"I'm so sorry!" she said, blushing.

He had no idea what to say.

"Perhaps we should go," he said at last, and with a tiny nod, she turned and walked ahead of him to the front door.

If the concert was as he expected—typical discordant Andorian fare—he couldn't say. He hardly heard it at all. As they sat side by side in the concert hall, Sarek's mind was a jumble of contradictions: Pleasure when he remembered the kiss and mortification when he thought of how he had taken Amanda's hand—and her mind—into his own without seeking her agreement. Her behavior might have been forward, but his was inexcusable.

And, yet, if he was completely honest with himself, he knew he would be tempted to do it again if the opportunity arose.

Would that be wise? The complications seemed overwhelming if they proceeded.

If Amanda was experiencing the same level of turmoil, she hid it well. In fact, she seemed quite taken with the music and spoke energetically about it as he walked her to the public transport station after the concert was over.

"Here's my ride," she said, glancing at the hover bus turning the corner. "Thank you for going with me tonight."

For one horrifying moment, Sarek thought she might kiss him again here in public, but she just smiled and nodded when her bus pulled up.

"I forgot to ask about your headache!" she called back as she queued up. "Are you okay?"

He gave a short wave as a reply.

By the time he walked back to his apartment, his headache had worsened. His throat was parched, too, and he couldn't adjust the temperature controls to suit him. All night long he was up and down, hot and dry, so restless that he quickly gave up the idea of trying to meditate. A virus? If he still felt this way in the morning, he would consult the healer.

He stretched out across his bed and closed his eyes, but every time he did, he replayed the events from earlier in the evening—felt again Amanda's fingers, her lips, her knee, the small of her back. The memory of her tongue in his mouth, of her mind in his like a tentative visitor, made him groan out loud.

And then he knew. _Pon farr._

Fear shortened his breath and he stood up, panicked.

The subspace comm unit chimed.

Before he answered, he knew it was his mother, alerted to his distress through their family bond. Sure enough, her face swam into view when he tapped the controls.

"This is early," his mother, T'Aara, said. "You can still get home in time."

"Get home to what?" he said, struggling to keep his tone even.

"I will call the matchmakers right away," T'Aara said. "T'Nara can go ahead and prepare the place for the _koon'ut."_

"No!" he said loudly. His mother didn't bother to hide her worried expression. "I told you—I will not risk being bonded to someone who doesn't also seek marriage."

"I will instruct the matchmakers—"

"There is not enough time," Sarek said, gulping. His heart was beating so hard that he could feel it in his throat, like the buzz of Terran bees. "I will not bring another child into the world that I cannot care for fully. I will not, Mother. Please understand."

Even over the subspace, Sarek could make out the distress in his mother's face.

"Just because Sybok's mother refused you does not mean that another bondmate will," she said. "Your logic is faulty. Arguing from one example is a fallacy."

Sarek lowered his eyes and considered his mother's words. She was correct, of course, that although Sybok's mother had not wanted to marry him, another bondmate might be more agreeable.

However, the idea of an emergency coupling—with someone he did not know, for a future he could not predict—was unsettling.

"Even so," he said, lifting his eyes, "I have other plans."

"You have someone on Earth?" his mother said, her eyes growing wide.

"No," Sarek said. "I will spend the time in meditation. It _has_ been done, Mother. By many people. The stories of the danger are overblown."

His mother shifted in her seat and Sarek hurried on.

"And if I cannot manage with meditation alone, the healer can give me some meledoxidrine to alleviate the worst symptoms. I will be okay."

"And if you are not?" his mother said, this time sounding almost angry. "You say you do not want to father a child you cannot raise. What about Sybok? If you die, you will not be able to raise him, either."

Taking a deep breath, Sarek felt the bond with his mother humming like an electric current. Her worry was understandable. Her affection was appreciated.

"I will not die, Mother," he said, and he tapped the subspace comm shut.

For the next hour he prepared his apartment, clearing the tables and dressers of breakable objects, filling several large jugs with water and setting them along one wall in his bedroom.

He typed out a short message to his secretary and told her he would not be into work for several days, and then he turned off his comm and his pager and disabled the door chime and the entry code.

He changed into loose clothes, turned the cooling unit as low as it would go, and lit his _asenoi,_ and then, not able to think any further, he lowered himself on the floor cross legged and tried to enter the first level of meditation.

Normally reaching the first level was so easy that it took only the slimmest preparation. Today, however, Sarek struggled to concentrate on the flickering firepot. If he weren't so hot he could think. Reaching behind him, he opened one of the water jugs.

That was better. He let his hands drift to his side and started counting his breaths. One, two, three—

A flitter whirred loudly overhead. Someone in the distance—a neighbor, perhaps—coughed twice. The air handler in the corridor rattled.

Four, five, six—

Another flitter, this one so close that it shook the floor of his apartment.

With a bang, Sarek slammed the flat of his hand down. He raised his hand back up to eye level and looked. He was shaking, as the humans said, like a leaf.

Over the next few hours he slowly slid into a haze of fever and disturbing fits of emotion—anger at random noises, despair at his uncontrolled outbursts. And running through everything was a grinding, aching sexual frustration that blinkered his thoughts and kept him coming back again and again to the memory of Amanda's kiss.

He knew that using fantasy and memory could help ease normal sexual tension. Surely it would help him through this.

At first he tried to shift his memories to long ago encounters he had in his youth—sexual explorations with two different Vulcan women, one a fellow student at the Vulcan Science Academy, the other an architect working in the same office in his first fulltime job.

Both relationships had been relatively short-lived and amicable, but when Sarek tried to call up the images of either woman, he had trouble picturing them—as if his mind had blanked them out. Instead, he drifted back to the way Amanda's fingers had felt in his hand, closed his eyes and felt—in startling detail—her body pressed against his in the kitchen.

For two days he alternated between fitful dreams that shook him awake, his clothes soaked with sweat and semen, and short periods of meditation, his hand shaking so hard that he struggled not to tip over his _asenoi_ as he relit it. In the distant part of his mind he watched himself sinking further and further, like a dispassionate observer, until he woke up with a start, surprised that he was still alive.

Someone was banging on the door.

"Sarek! Are you in there?"

Amanda! He pushed the bedcovers off and stood up, wobbly, unshaven. Amanda! Before he had any conscious thought of doing so, his body was tumbling toward the corridor, pulled forward by an urgency that almost frightened him.

"Open the door, Sarek! I'm worried about you!"

He could do it! He could open the door and she would be there as he needed her to be—in his mind and in his bed.

_Parted from me and never parted._

The words of the _koon'ut_ rang in his ears and he stumbled to a stop.

Amanda banged on the door again.

Leaning against the wall where he stood, Sarek slowed his breathing and listened to his heartbeat in his ears.

She was just outside. He could open the door.

With a grimace, he forced himself to sit where he was, his head bending forward until his forehead touched the ground. Until the banging at the door stopped and he heard Amanda's footsteps growing faint, he didn't move. Then he dragged himself back to his bedroom and lay down on the floor next to his bed.

 _I am going to die,_ he thought with the same dispassionate point of view that had entertained him earlier. Now that the idea of his own death wasn't something abstract or distant, he took it up and examined it, like someone listening to a piece or music or reading a narrative.

He thought of his mother and father and allowed himself to feel gratitude for their guidance and care. They would be distressed by his death, of course, but they would accept it—or he hoped they would.

And his colleagues—the people he saw daily who were part of the landscape of his work—they would note his death as well, perhaps finding their lives more difficult without his help.

Sybok was too young, too distant to know what the loss of his father would mean. Sarek felt a deep pain in his side at the thought of leaving his son an orphan.

And Amanda. What was that human saying about loss? That you never knew what you had until you lost it?

 _More banging at the door._ A hallucination, his fevered mind wishing to see her again, to stutter out something this time when she looked abashed and apologized for kissing him, instead of his tongue-tied silence.

_So hot—the cooling unit must be broken._

A Vulcan face swam into view. It buckled and wavered and the mouth opened and shut and called out, "He is here."

A mechanical purring in his ear, someone saying, "He is out of danger," and a sudden coolness on his back as he was lifted from the floor and lowered gently, gently onto his bed. A sheet pulled up to his chin, and Amanda, her eyelashes wet and clumpy, leaning over him.

"Are you sure it's safe to leave him here?"

 _I am dying,_ he said, but no one seemed to hear him.

Retreating footsteps, lights flickering off, his _asenoi_ dark. The front door slammed and the house grew quiet. In a few minutes he was asleep.

He began dreaming at once. In his dream he heard the beep of the keypad as the front door was opened and he listened as footsteps pattered down the corridor.

 _I knew you would return,_ he said, looking up at Amanda standing beside his bed. In the dream he could see her smile despite the darkness of the room, and because the room was dark, he risked letting his own mouth quirk up.

 _How's your headache?_ she said, and the bed shifted and dipped as she pressed one knee into the mattress and leaned over him, her fingers sliding across his forehead. _Do I need to kiss it and make it well?_

She stood back up and made some odd motion with her hand, angling her arm behind her back. Her dress slipped over her bare shoulders and then fell to the floor. Kneeling again on the bed, she leaned over him.

He shivered and reached for her.

When he awoke he knew he was over the worst of it. Although he still felt feverish, he wasn't as dehydrated or achy. The headache was gone but his muscles were sore, as if he had been running in the desert. Some food and a shower, and by lunchtime he felt well enough to return to work.

On the walk from his apartment to his office he mulled over what to say to Amanda, tried to sort out what she knew. He had a clear memory of hearing her banging on his door, of her returning later with a healer. The thought that she had seen him as he had been made him flush—but there was no denying it, what she knew.

Nor what he had discovered when he thought he was dying—about loss and regret, about not speaking when words were called for.

"You look much better!" Amanda said as soon as he came in the door. She was sitting at her desk, her hands poised above the keyboard of her computer. "How are you feeling?"

"I am…well," he said, trying to decide if he really was. "I wanted to thank you…for your concern. I am sorry for the trouble I caused you."

She was watching him closely as he spoke, an unreadable expression on her face.

He stood in the doorway, unsure how to proceed. Finally he said, "The healer must have told you—"

Stumbling to a stop, he looked down.

"Sarek," Amanda said, "I never meant to intrude in your privacy. If the healer said anything, I've already forgotten it. I don't have that Vulcan memory like you do. I'm just glad you're okay."

Looking back up, he saw that she was leaning forward slightly, as if doing so punctuated what she was saying.

He nodded and said, "Very well."

"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," Amanda said leaning back, and Sarek tilted his head and raised one eyebrow. "You know—some things aren't supposed to be remembered?"

He realized that she was asking if he understood the saying—one of many human aphorisms that tripped him up from time to time. He nodded.

"But I do have a question," he said, and Amanda sat up at attention. "I disabled my apartment door code. How did you get in?"

"Oh, that!" Amanda said breezily. "I paid attention when the healer used the emergency override. That's how I got back in later."

X X

Sybok wakes in sickbay.

A surprise, really, not to find himself in the brig. He tries to sit up but the pain in his head forces him back down.

"Easy there." Sybok looks around for the owner of the voice—a dark-haired man in blue holding a medical tricorder. A healer, evidently.

"Dr. McCoy?" A tall blonde human offers to hand the healer a padd but he knits his brows and shakes his head.

"Put it over there," McCoy says, pointing to a counter before turning his attention back to Sybok.

"I was stunned."

"You were indeed," McCoy says. "And from what they tell me, with good reason."

McCoy raises his eyebrows—an unmistakable nonverbal _You deserved it_. Despite the pain behind his eyes, Sybok gives a rueful laugh.

"A Vulcan with a sense of humor," McCoy says, shaking his head. And then, as an afterthought, he adds, "And quite a temper."

"What do you mean?" Sybok says, watching McCoy wave his medical tricorder in front of him.

"Well," McCoy says slowly, "you _did_ try to kill our first officer."

"I wasn't trying to kill him."

"That's not what the captain said."

Sybok looks at McCoy more closely, a man with a world-weariness surprising in one so young. A jokester, perhaps, or someone who uses humor to mask his pain.

"The captain is mistaken," Sybok says, looking away. "I would never hurt Spock."

"I could understand if you wanted to. I certainly do sometimes."

The doctor's serious words are at odds with his playful tone—something Sybok hasn't heard in years.

Amanda, of course, was adept at saying one thing while meaning another.

"I _know_ you don't want me to read you another story," she would often tease as she settled him in bed at night after she and Sarek moved to Vulcan. Although he spent more time with his grandmother and aunt, Sybok preferred the room Amanda had tricked out for him at the house in Shi'Kahr—the ceiling painted a rich purple like the night sky, real lights the size of pinpricks set in random patterns like stars.

When he protested that he did, in fact, want another story, she would sigh and pretend to be persuaded, their chatter eventually garnering the attention of Sarek who would look in disapprovingly on his way down the hall to his study.

At such times Amanda would wait until his footfalls had fallen away before laughing softly, like a conspirator, and saying, "Your father's jealous that we are having all the fun!"

Now a bustle at the door—and Sybok sees Captain Kirk with a security guard, Spock bringing up the rear. Gingerly he raises himself on the biobed and swings his legs over the side.

"Captain Kirk—" he says, holding up his hands like someone in surrender.

"You try anything, I'll stun you again."

He would, too—Sybok notes the cant of the captain's head, like someone leaning into a storm.

Shrugging, Sybok lowers his hands and meets Spock's gaze.

"You were not harmed," Sybok says.

He means by the close phaser fire, but as he says it, he realizes from Spock's expression—a hint of anger quickly replaced by a feigned indifference—that he thinks Sybok means the forced mind meld.

"A _V'tosh ka'tur_ would not think so," Spock says. His eyes are narrowed, his voice barely suppressing his grievance.

 _A fair rebuke._ Sybok nods once and says, "I was not…in control. For that, I apologize."

"The people on your ship?" the captain says, taking a step closer. "How are they going to react when they find out about Vulcan? The way you did?"

"I won't lie to you," Sybok says. "We are a violent people—like all Vulcans are, though some hide behind ceremony and ritual. Take that away and you see us as we truly are.

"And as for the Rihannsu—well, our distant brothers make no claims to be peaceful people. Without Vulcan, they have no place to go, either. We have nothing, Captain. Nothing. And people with nothing have nothing to lose."

Captain Kirk clenches and then spreads the fingers of his right hand rhythmically and takes a deep breath before answering.

"Then we have to convince them that they do have something to lose. You have to convince them—keep them cooperative—at least until the High Council on New Vulcan decides what to do."

"A colony world?"

"They've already made a lot of progress. The High Council is meeting now to consider your petition to settle. Of course, there's the problem of the Altoran ship to consider—"

"We made no petition," Sybok starts to say, but his words falter as he sees Spock's face, pale and drained, and watches as he totters suddenly, as if the ground had shifted under his feet.

"The bridge," Spock says tonelessly. "The crew."

Clearly alarmed, the Captain grabs Spock's arm to keep him upright. "What it is?"

But before Spock can speak, the intercom squeals and a man with a heavy Scottish brogue says, "Captain, we have intruders onboard. They've taken over the bridge."


	8. Messages

**Chapter 8: Messages  
**

**Disclaimer: Oh, if you could see my bank account, you'd know for certain that I do this for free!**

The safety on the phase pistol retracts with a _click_.

"Don't move."

The voice at Nyota's ear is guttural, forceful. _And speaking Rihannsu like a merchant or a farmer rather than a warrior._ Probably a good thing. The warrior caste is notoriously trigger happy—or so she has heard.

Most of what Starfleet knows about the Rihannsu is cadged together from snippets of intercepted subspace communications when the larger star cruisers drift too close to Starbase 10. That Nyota knows as much of the language as she does—enough of the three dialects to have a passing understanding of each—is a fluke, and a lucky one at that. When she began working as Spock's teaching aide at the Academy, he offered to tutor her on Vulcan variants—including the known vocabulary of Romulans.

"My cousin and I were…intimately acquainted…with a native speaker," he told her cryptically one day over tea in the breakroom. "A woman whose father was a Romulan guard on a mining planet. I am still in contact with someone there."

At the time Nyota hadn't asked for details. Spock's hesitation precluded it. But she was grateful all the same that he was willing to teach her the language.

The first time that knowledge had come in handy, she received a field promotion and a place on the bridge as the _Enterprise_ pursued Nero. Now she listens closely as the five men wearing heavy cloaks fan out, waving their phase pistols in front of them.

As the tallest of the five moves beside Chekov, Nyota can make out his features. Dark, almost swarthy, with long hair to his shoulders—and the unmistakable ears and canted eyebrows of the Rihannsu. Unlike Nero and the crew of the _Narada_ , these Romulans have no mourning tattoos on their faces, though their clothes are similar.

"Stand aside," the man says to Chekov, but instead of moving away from the navigation console, the young navigator hunches his shoulders and stares straight ahead. The Rihannsu takes a step toward him, raises his pistol, and brings his fist down so hard on Chekov's head that he almost tumbles onto the deck.

"He doesn't understand you!" Nyota says, leaping to her feet. "I can turn on the universal translator—"

"I said, don't move!"

Chekov's assailant is at her side in two strides. Squaring her shoulders in his direction, Nyota braces herself for a blow.

"At least let me tell him what you want," she says quietly, carefully, keeping her eyes on the Romulan's face. He blinks once, twice, his expression registering some internal deliberation.

"Sit!" the man says, motioning with his pistol. Without taking her eyes from his, Nyota edges backward until her knee bumps her chair and she lowers herself into it.

"Tell him to set a course for Vulcan," he says, his pistol aimed at her.

If her heart was racing before, now she can feel it pulsing in her throat. She focuses on slowing her heartbeat by reaching to Spock through their bond. If she can get the message to him—

_Five. Armed with phase pistols. They don't know about Vulcan._

Normally her sense of him in her mind is quiet and indirect—something he does intentionally to keep from distracting them both as they work—but from the moment Sybok beamed aboard, she'd felt Spock's agitation. He was nervous in a way she'd never seen, and anxious, wary, anticipating disappointment—and underneath it all, hoping that Sybok was really, truly coming home.

And then, of course, everything had fallen apart—Sybok pressing his way into Spock's memories against his will, Spock desperately tamping down his connection to her to spare her from Sybok's unearned intimacy.

That silence was followed by a deeper absence as he lost consciousness. Then a shaky return to duty shortly afterwards—both Spock and the captain making a point of looking in her direction when they exited the turbolift.

When McCoy called the bridge an hour ago saying, "He's coming around, Jim,"— she felt Spock's anxiety rise—and his anger, too.

Although outwardly Spock had not reacted, the captain turned to him and said, "Are you up for this?" and headed to the turbolift without looking back, as if he had known Spock would follow.

When the intruders beamed onto the bridge minutes later, Nyota had been the first to know, alerted by the high-pitched hum of a transporter signal and the immediate distinctive click of the safety being retracted on the pistol at her head.

_What do I do now?_

She closes her eyes briefly and tries to center herself long enough to get a sense of where Spock is, of what he's doing. He's there, in her mind, but not as he can be—sharp and warm and present—but like a shadow in the distance, or an echo across a deep valley.

"Set the course!"

The Romulan commander lifts his hand as if to hit her and from the corner of her eye she sees Chekov and Sulu both start to rise from their seats. She shakes her head a fraction. _Don't_.

"It's okay," she says aloud, and when the Romulan lowers his hand, Chekov and Sulu sit back down slowly. The rest of the bridge crew—Hannity at science, Jones and M'low at their normal stations—watch warily. Then in Rihannsu Nyota says, "We've been having trouble with our navigational computer. Just before you came aboard, we took it offline for repairs."

"That is a lie, Raska'ot," one of the other Romulans says. The burly man closest to her—Raska'ot—snaps his head in the direction of the speaker.

"You were able to find us well enough," Raska'ot says, turning to her.

"We were lucky," she says quickly. "Our engineer thinks the problem we are having with the warp drive is affecting the navicomputer. If you want me to, I can check on the repairs—"

"Dravik!" Raska'ot says, and the man who had spoken earlier moves swiftly to the navigation console and pulls Chekov up and out of the seat.

"Explain this control," Dravik says to Chekov, the note of irritation in his voice evident. Chekov swivels toward Nyota.

"He wants you to explain the controls," she says in Standard. "I told him about the trouble we have been having with our navigation computer. About how we had to take it offline right before they boarded."

 _We're stalling_ , she calls out wordlessly, but if Spock is aware, she can't tell. Instead of the thrumming connection between them she feels a dull heaviness, like a headache slowly descending behind her eyes.

"Offline?" Sulu says, his face a knot of confusion.

Behind her Nyota hears the rustle of Raska'ot's cloak as he shifts position. He suspects something, she's sure—might even understand more Standard than he lets on.

"That's right," Nyota says. "While you were on your break, Scotty had to take the computer offline. You know, to see if the problem with the warp drive had anything to do with the false readings you reported."

Of all the cadets she'd played poker with at the Academy, Sulu was the only one who never fell for her bluffs. She wills him to see through her now.

"Oh," he says slowly, his face resetting to neutral. "I thought it had been fixed while I was…on break."

Again a rustle from Raska'ot, and Nyota feels a little thrill of discovery. _He understands their conversation._ She'll have to tread lightly.

All the while Chekov has been darting his eyes from her to Sulu and back again. Then he gives an almost imperceptible sigh and leans past the Romulan in his seat, pointing to the monitor.

"Here is ze proximity sensor. It must be engaged before you can set ze warp algorithms."

With a quick motion of his head, Chekov glances back at Nyota. She repeats his words in Rihannsu.

"As you can see," he says, pointing to a different indicator, "ze navigation computer is offline. The helm control is tied in to ze navicomputer here and here, and when ze proximity sensor is malfunctioning, ze warp signature can't be sustained—"

Nyota keeps up a running translation as Chekov speaks, noting the Romulan's rising frustration, his fingers flying over the console, his breathing becoming more erratic. With a sudden jerk of his head, he turns and says, "We'll need his help, Raska'ot."

He stands then, and without any prompting, Chekov sits down and reclaims the controls.

"Now," Raska'ot says, leaning low and speaking into her ear, "tell him to set a course for Vulcan."

"But the computer—"

"Tell him," Raska'ot says. The cold end of the pistol touches the back of her neck and she catches herself before she jumps.

Somehow she knows that wherever he is, Spock feels it, too—that he is flooded with anger so rich that her face flushes and her brow is prickled with tiny droplets of sweat.

"He wants to go to Vulcan," Nyota says, and before Chekov can protest, she adds, "and if we don't—"

"I won't hesitate to kill you," Raska'ot says, and if Nyota wasn't certain before, now she knows he can follow what she is saying.

She gives both Chekov and Sulu a meaningful look.

"We don't have a choice," she says.

"But the captain—" Sulu begins, and Nyota says, "The captain would tell you to do what you have to to protect the ship."

For a moment Sulu hesitates, and then to Nyota's relief, he says, "It's going to be slow going until Scotty gets the warp drive and the navicomputer back online."

Nyota nods and turns to Raska'ot but he doesn't even pretend not to understand. He frowns and shifts the phase pistol in his hand, reminding her, as if he needed to, that he would be right behind her, watching.

X

"Tea?"

Sarek put his palms on his thighs and started to stand up. The wooden chair where he sat creaked as he moved, a jarring noise that highlighted how cheap and poorly made it was. For a moment he wished that he had taken more care with furnishing his apartment before asking his clan matriarch to visit.

_Too late now. Regret was illogical._

From the overstuffed loveseat on the other side of the room, T'Pau shook her head.

"I require none," she said, smoothing her robe over her lap. Her motions were strong and purposeful, but her wrinkled hands gave away her advanced age.

She fell silent and Sarek took a breath, considering how to begin.

"I know it was an inconvenience for you to come," he said at last, and T'Pau quipped, "Yes, it was."

Unexpectedly flustered by the bluntness of her words, Sarek faltered.

"Perhaps," T'Pau went on, "you can tell me about your health. Your mother informs me that recently you were ill."

Despite himself, Sarek flushed at the veiled mention of his recent _pon farr_. As clan matriarch, T'Pau was privy to just that sort of private information, and rightly so. Nevertheless, Sarek fought back a wave of embarrassment.

"I am well," he said simply, and she raised one eyebrow and said, "Obviously. Though I do not see how."

Again a veiled comment, this time a request for information.

"It is about that," Sarek said, "that I asked you to come."

T'Pau said nothing but peered at him, her expression unreadable.

"That is," Sarek said, stumbling over his words, "I seek your advice about how to…proceed."

"Proceed?"

"With a relationship. With a human."

He glanced away as he spoke, aware that doing so was an admission of sorts.

He heard T'Pau take a breath.

"Yes," she said, and he looked up in surprise. "I will take some tea."

So. She was caught off guard and needed time to gather her thoughts. The idea sped up his heartbeat and dried his mouth. Tea, then, for both of them.

As he busied himself in the little kitchen off the living area, he strained to hear any sounds from the other room, but T'Pau was silent— _as quiet as a mouse_.

The idiom—one Amanda used often—popped into his head unbidden.

"Where did you come from!" she might say when he entered a room unnoticed as she worked. "You're always lurking around and then showing up, quiet as a mouse!"

The tea he selected was a fragrant blend of Terran and Vulcan leaves, a compromise Amanda had created after complaining for months about the tea served in the commissary at the embassy. As T'Pau took a sip, Sarek watched her reaction and was relieved that she took a second, longer drink.

Not an omen, of course. Sarek did not ascribe to such illogical musings.

"This human," T'Pau said without preamble, "is someone to whom you feel indebted? Because of your recent…illness?"

"She helped me, yes," he said, studiously looking into his teacup. He waited for T'Pau to ask him the details—wondered what he would say if she did.

Since the night he had woken up with Amanda leaning over him, dreamlike, vague, he had recovered bits and pieces of their time together, like reconstructing a scattered puzzle. She had said nothing to him directly—had, in fact, been obscure when he fished for details—but slowly, haltingly, he was remembering what had happened.

Today, for instance, standing beside her as she typed up a schedule, he found his gaze drawn to the curve of her neck and he knew with absolute certainty how her skin felt under his fingertips, recalled how she let her hair fall loose over her shoulders as she pressed him to the bed and straddled him.

"Then explain," T'Pau said. "She was helpful and you have recovered. What else is to be discussed?"

He'd asked himself the same thing more than once. Why, indeed, was he letting his thoughts drift into the possibility of a relationship, as improbable as that was? She had been helpful and he was appreciative. Nothing more was required.

 _Except. Except._ His mind kept stuttering over some objection to dismissing Amanda as a mere sexual dalliance. She was more than that, certainly, though he couldn't settle on what, exactly. A friend, the way humans described friendship? Someone whose company he enjoyed, whose quick wit and keen mind he never found predictable or boring? Someone who evoked qualities in himself that he didn't know he had—a willingness to see things from her point of view, an eagerness to do things that gave her pleasure or made her work easier?

All these and more.

But what did it mean?

"She is an agreeable companion," he said, which while it was true, made him feel vaguely disloyal, as if he were betraying Amanda. _Selling her short_ , as it were—another idiom he had learned from her.

"Are you asking my permission," T'Pau said, "or my advice?"

Sarek grew still and considered. As the head of his clan, T'Pau was free to give either—and he would do well to do whatever she said. He didn't doubt that she was wise—and he trusted her implicitly.

But if she should forbid his relationship with Amanda, was he willing to obey? The thought made him pause.

"Whichever you prefer to give," he said at last, and he saw a flash of something in T'Pau's expression. Surprise? Approval?

She leaned forward suddenly and set her teacup on the coffee table.

"Then I advise you to find other companions," she said, and his heart sank. "You may not be here on Terra that much longer. A good thing, I think, to come home—where you can be closer to your parents as they age, to your son."

The news was not entirely unexpected. Recently Admiral Somak's chief assistant, T'Mir, had announced her impending retirement. At 278 she was ready to return to the warmer climes of home, meaning that either Sarek or the other junior adjutant, Savil, would be promoted to replace her.

But until T'Pau suggested it, Sarek had assumed that regardless of who took over T'Mir's duties, he would remain at the embassy in San Francisco.

Apparently there was some question about that. Or some doubt that he was the candidate more likely to receive the promotion. The odds were high that if Savil were the one promoted, he would ask Sarek to leave. Not that they were antagonists—not exactly—but Savil didn't hide his disapproval of many of Sarek's initiatives, especially where they involved direct contact with humans.

Hiring Amanda, for instance. Savil had been an early critic of the idea of a human cultural attaché.

"Vulcan civilization has little to learn from neophytes," Savil had said dismissively when Sarek invited him to a seminar on Terran social customs. If he were the one promoted, such initiatives would cease—and Savil would want a staff that agreed with his vision.

"I understand," T'Pau said, rising slowly, "that you have been unduly stressed and isolated here. That this existence—" and here she lifted her hand to indicate the drab apartment and the life it represented—"has been a challenge."

She took a step toward the door and Sarek moved quickly to her side and kept his arm ready if she needed it. At the door T'Pau did reach over and touch his arm, the way a human would, to punctuate a point.

"It is not always easy to follow Vulcan traditions, but you have served Vulcan well, Sarek," she said. "Please continue to do so."

She wasn't referring to his work at the embassy, and Sarek knew it.

Long after T'Pau had left, he sat on the creaky chair and let his gaze drift into the middle distance. Meditation would have been a more logical thing to do, but he knew he didn't have the proper focus or energy.

So. Not a prohibition, exactly, but close. He was startled at the stew of emotions T'Pau's words had stirred up in him—disappointment so keen that it felt like a physical ache in his side, and anger, too, though he avoided lingering on it, steered away from putting words to the darkness that roiled inside him.

For the next two days he saw Amanda only in passing. The first draft of the Corridan trade agreement was rejected by two of the five signatories and Sarek spent much of his time shuttling between embassies. He was almost grateful for the Tellarites' intractability—slowing down progress and keeping him occupied.

And out of the office. Away from her.

On the third day he rounded the corner near his office and ran into Amanda, literally. He lept back as if burned and she eyed him and said, "You're avoiding me."

He denied it at once.

"It certainly seems like it," she said, tilting her head and putting her hands on her hips.

"I have been busy," Sarek said, looking beyond her. "Nothing more."

Was it a lie if he wanted it to be true? He started to go around her to his office. Darting out her hand, she caught his sleeve for a moment, long enough to make him stop.

"Is that right? Well, I hope you aren't so busy that you are going to ditch me tonight."

"Ditch you?"

"Have you forgotten?" she said, grinning up at him. "The opening of the Nausicaan cultural museum? You asked me to come with you—after that little episode with the Nausicaan attaché?"

He hadn't forgotten, not exactly. Avoided thinking about it—that was a more accurate description. As a rule he tolerated rather than enjoyed such formal events—and the Nausicaans were particularly trying. Excessively emotional and demonstrative, their contact with the Vulcans was a history of miscommunications and diplomatic missteps. Having a human along to help him navigate the museum opening had seemed like a good idea when it was slotted to his calendar.

His logic was failing him if he assumed that Amanda—who not only tolerated but seemed to thrive during such social occasions—would cancel of her own accord.

He'd have to tell her, then—somehow explain that whatever had started between would have to end. Not their formal relationship, of course. He didn't want her to stop her work at the embassy. That idea was surprisingly disagreeable.

No, he would explain T'Pau's concern—and his own, too—about his future on Earth, his necessity for returning closer to his family at some point. About the importance of preserving tradition, the difficulty of navigating a cross-species relationship.

Vaguely he wondered if he had misread her interest, that she had no thoughts about pursuing something so radical as a bonded Vulcan marriage. He pressed his fingers to his side and had uneasy imaginings of her laughing at his misunderstanding.

Either way, he owed it to her to explain why he had been avoiding her. Which, of course, he was.

"We must talk," he said.

"Yes," she agreed. "We need to talk. That's why I've made reservations at that little Moroccan restaurant I've told you about. Six o'clock, the chef only seats six guests at a time. We'll get something to eat there before we go to the opening."

Discussing such a fraught subject over a meal gave Sarek pause—but then, any discussion over a meal did. Like most Vulcans, he preferred to eat in silence—efficiently, his attention on acquiring adequate nutrition and little more.

Humans treated meals as social occasions—and over months of casual meals with Amanda, he had tried to adapt. Still, the idea of discussing something as private as—

He set the thought aside until later.

The restaurant was no larger than Sarek's living room, unmarked with any outside sign, and around the block from Amanda's apartment building. Inside, the walls were painted a dusky red with thick drapes at the windows and flickering candles on the three widely-spaced tables. As he waited for Amanda to arrive, Sarek wondered if part of her reason for bringing him here was because it was reminiscent of Vulcan décor. It would be like her to do so.

The waiter served him a hot drink fragrant with citrus and basil and something unfamiliar, something spicy but not unpleasant. By the time Amanda came in—a flurry of apologies for being late, wearing a crisp yellow dress cinched in at her waist and flared over her hips—he was on his second cup.

"My mother called as I was walking out the door!" she said breathlessly as she settled in the chair across from him. "I told her I had to leave, but she doesn't take no for answer!"

"A family trait, I think."

 _Had he really said that?_ He blinked. Amanda burst out laughing.

"When have I ever done that!"

She wasn't asking a question—he recognized that she was teasing him instead. But to his horror he heard himself answering her.

"When you overrode the security code to my apartment."

There—the subject laid bare between them as he had never imagined it would be. Or could be. The closeness of the room, perhaps, or the implied intimacy of the small tables, the quiet ministrations of a waiter who suddenly appeared at Sarek's elbow, refilling his cup and setting out a plate of sliced fruit. Something had loosened his tongue in a way that was almost alarming.

"Oh, that," Amanda said, letting her fingers drift to a piece of sliced mango. Fascinated, Sarek watched her pick it up and slip it to her lips. It was almost scandalous, her naked hand touching food this way. He tried to look away and found that he couldn't. "You didn't seem to mind at the time," she said, and he shivered.

She smiled and picked up a fruit he didn't recognize, a small orange oval that had been partially peeled.

He was at a loss for how to respond. He _hadn't_ minded, not at the time and not now as he thought about it.

A soft rustle at his side—and the waiter was there again, this time with a covered tagine that he set on the center of the table. Across the table Amanda raised her eyebrows at Sarek—as if they were sharing a secret at the waiter's expense.

What would it feel like, Sarek wondered, to actually know what she was thinking at this moment?

The waiter lifted the top of the tagine and took it with him, returning in a moment with two plates that he set on the table.

"Enjoy," he said before melting away into the shadows of the room.

Picking up the ladle in the tagine, Amanda dipped it into the stew—a mix of Terran vegetables, as far as Sarek could tell—and said, "So. Tell me why you've been avoiding me."

Caught in the act of sipping his tea, Sarek choked and swallowed.

"And don't say that you weren't," she said, tipping the contents of the ladle onto his plate.

He flushed, about to do just that.

Something had changed between them, some calculus of power and comfort shifting since she had overridden his door lock. In the past she had been the one to stammer and flush. Now he was lost and awkward in her presence, unsure when to speak and what to say.

The silence stretched between them.

"I apologize," he finally said, not sure if he meant for his silence or his earlier dishonesty about avoiding her.

Amanda speared a knobby-looking legume with her fork.

"You aren't eating. The chef will take offense."

Following Amanda's lead, he picked up his fork and selected one of the legumes. The taste was reminiscent of the tea—with a hint of the same unusual spice.

They ate for a few minutes in companionable quiet. Another couple entered the restaurant and were seated at the table closest to the kitchen. Soft music—Terran but sounding oddly discordant and alien—masked the noise of their conversation and made their voices indistinct, even to Sarek's ear. He began to relax.

"What do you think?" Amanda said, putting her elbows on the table and leaning forward. The motion rucked her dress around her bosom tightly and untethered one lock of her dark hair from the ornamental pin holding it back.

In the part of his brain that wasn't oddly preoccupied with these distractions, Sarek knew that she was asking him how he liked the meal.

He opened his mouth to answer but found himself spluttering instead.

"You look very agreeable this evening."

If he was surprised, Amanda was doubly so. She set down her fork and smiled.

"Coming from you," she said, "that's quite a compliment."

"Has someone else been commenting on your appearance?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Who. Else."

"Sarek, you sound angry. Are you okay?"

He wasn't, in fact, okay. His hand shaking, he reached for his cup of tea and tried to clear his throat.

"I am…not sure," he said.

"Then we should leave," Amanda said, her voice full of concern and worry.

"No!"

The couple across the room stopped talking and looked in his direction.

"No," he said more softly. "I need to tell you…I need to answer your question. About why I have…avoided you."

Amanda's mood changed immediately from concerned to wary—or at least he thought so. She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. Suddenly she seemed so unapproachable that he felt a stab of despair. This wasn't going well.

"I was glad you overrode my security code."

That wasn't what he had planned to say at all. What was wrong with him tonight?

Amanda's arms were still crossed and she narrowed her gaze.

"But you regret it now? Is that it?"

Something in her posture suggested that she was ready to spring up and away, an idea that made him feel close to panic.

"I do not," he said, but she continued to frown.

"Then what? You're afraid I'm reading too much into it? That I'm going to make some sort of demands on you?"

Her words were sharp and staccato, coming at him so fast that he had trouble parsing their meaning.

"Look," she continued, uncrossing her arms and lowering her voice, "you don't have to worry. I told you that. I know you aren't looking for anything more. What happened…happened. It doesn't mean anything."

She glanced to the side as she finished, as if she was dismissing him somehow, consigning him to some chapter in her history.

He blinked, trying to pinpoint why his heart was so heavy.

"It means something to me."

He blurted it out, astonished. Amanda pulled her gaze back to him with a jerk.

 _What was he doing?_ Find other companions, T'Pau had advised, and here he was making emotionally suggestive comments to the woman he needed to distance himself from.

Like someone in a dream, he watched himself reaching across the table and covering Amanda's hand with his own.

There it was again, the warmth he remembered, and the silvery tingle as their minds approached each other.

And not just the warmth of her mind but the remembered warmth of her body. He felt the stirrings of arousal, hers as well as his.

 _This would never do, touching an unbonded woman this way in public._ No sooner did he have that thought than Amanda suggested they finish their meal and abandon the idea of attending the Nausicaan opening.

"My apartment is a block from here," she said aloud. "I want to show it to you."

An invitation—and not just to her apartment.

Even in his slightly fevered state he knew he wasn't himself. Something had altered his ability to think clearly, had unstoppered his mouth the way alcohol often did for humans. An illness? He discounted that idea. The trouble started soon after he began drinking the tea. Sarek knew to avoid chocolate—but could the meal tonight have had something else with similar properties?

Musing on this, he watched idly as Amanda paid their bill and led him out the door and down the street.

"The head of my clan advises against this," he said as they reached her door. Amanda's face went blank.

"You spoke to her about me?"

"Of course," Sarek said. "She _is_ the matriarch of the family."

"But, but—she told you not to get involved? With me?"

"She advised against it," he said. "As I said."

Amanda put her hand on the keypad and Sarek heard the door snick open. Turning in the doorway, she raised her palm and pressed it lightly against his chest.

"Then maybe you shouldn't come in."

"I agree."

She gave a small nod—sadly?—and said, "Then, goodnight."

"On the other hand—" he said, and she paused in the act of closing the door—"I do not wish to leave you without an activity for the evening. As I recall, you were concerned that I might _ditch you_?"

"I'll get over it," she said. "Things happen."

"Agreed," he said, stepping closer. "Things have happened."

He lifted his hand and let his fingertip skim across her cheek. To his amazement, she closed her eyes and tipped her chin up. The prelude to a kiss? He wasn't certain.

He leaned forward and brushed his fingers across hers. She opened her eyes.

With a smirk, Amanda said, "We need to work on that."

"That seems logical," he said, and she laughed.

"What about your matriarch's objection?"

"Her opinion was formed with incomplete data," Sarek said.

How easily he fell into bantering when he was with Amanda. No one else evoked that quality in him—that playful side that he found great pleasure in exploring.

He reached for her and she tugged him into the apartment, closing the door by leaning into it with her back, her arms slipping around his neck and pulling him into a human kiss.

"Then the logical thing to do," she said her mouth so close that he could feel every breath as she spoke, "is gather more data."

X X

"How'd your men get aboard my ship!"

Kirk is wild-eyed with anger, his voice clipped and hard.

 _Almost like a Vulcan_ , Sybok thinks, _or a Rihannsu._

"I did not order this, captain," he says. He's still sitting on the biobed in sickbay, the monitors above his head fluctuating and flickering. "When they lost contact with me, they must have decided to take desperate measures."

_Tri'eska, most likely, convinced that he had been killed when the guard stunned him._

Turning to the four security guards flanked behind him, Kirk barks, "Get on the bridge any way you have to!"

"Aye, sir!"

"Captain!" the voice on the intercom says. "More intruders. Decks 4, 5, and outside the armory."

"How many?"

"Sensors show 27 biosigns. No, wait. 32. Now they're also on Deck 6."

"The cargo transporter," Sybok says. "That's how they're getting aboard."

"Pinpoint that transporter signal, Scotty, and jam it!" Kirk shouts into the intercom. Then to Sybok he says, "This was your plan all along."

It wasn't, of course, but no use telling Kirk that now. Any denial will sound like a lie—or worse, like what it is, an admission that he's no longer in control. The odds are good that Raska'ot is on the bridge, that the rest of the Rihannsu and _V'tosh ka'tur_ are close behind.

Unless he can get in touch with Tri'eska, convince her to slow things down before they spin completely out of control.

"I can stop this," he says suddenly, hoping that neither the captain nor Spock can hear the uncertainty in his voice. Both men stare at him long and hard, and Sybok looks around for the doctor, McCoy, before continuing.

"How."

The captain's word is thrown down like a gauntlet, not a question as much as a challenge.

"My wife," Sybok says.

The captain frowns. McCoy purses his lips and says, "Right!" Spock, on the other hand, goes very still.

"Spock can tell you," Sybok says, "that pair bonds have a connection that transcends time and space—that we are in contact even when we are apart."

_An image from one of Spock's memories—a young woman in red, her dark eyes peering intently into Spock's own, her face so close that Sybok can recall a coil of her hair at her temple, the shimmer of her earring as she shakes her head—_

_And Spock's feelings as the underpinning of the memory—warmth and an unexpected tenderness, and more, too—something akin to possessiveness and intense sexual desire._

_Bonded, surely?_

But the meld had ended too soon to know for sure.

As Sybok speaks, a look of fury darkens Spock's expression.

"We want the same thing, captain," Sybok says, turning his attention to Kirk. "I want to return your ship to you before my people are hurt—or yours."

"Then call them off. You don't need anyone to help you do that."

"I wish that were true," Sybok says. "The Vulcans might agree, but the Rihannsu are less willing to accept my counsel. That's why I need my wife's help. They trust her."

"Your wife is Rihannsu?"

This from Spock, his tone skeptical.

"Yes," Sybok says, the ghost of a smile on his lips. "Why so surprised? You and I were fortunate in the choice of our parents."

It's an old joke from Spock's childhood—Sybok's reassurance that the whispered insults and sly looks Spock endured at school were unjust, inconsequential. That the hurtful comments about being the child of an interspecies couple were born of ignorance.

"If we were allowed to choose," Sybok told him more than once, "I would still choose to be your brother and Sarek and Amanda's son."

He had meant it, too, though he realized that any taunting or stigma that he felt was far less than what Spock suffered.

"We have to get on the bridge," the captain says, and Sybok nods.

"My wife is still on the Altoran ship. She can beam aboard—"

"You have no reassurance that they'll surrender to her."

Spock shifts his posture and says, "She could distract them while we beam in a security team."

"Scotty's going to have a cow," Kirk says, rubbing his hand over his chin. "It's one thing to beam across empty space and quite another to do intraship transport—"

"But not impossible?" Sybok says, and the captain looks at him with a hooded gaze and says, "No, not impossible."

"Then I require a quiet room so I can contact her," Sybok says, but as he takes a step forward, the deck beneath his feet buckles and he falls to one knee.

Kirk is already at the intercom, his thumb mashing the call button.

"Bridge!"

A hiss of static—Raska'ot has most likely disabled the communications console. Kirk presses another button and says, "Scotty, what the hell is going on!"

The same burr Sybok heard before grumbles to life.

"Another ship, captain! We're under attack!"

 

A/N:  If you're out there, give me a shout!  It's lonely in here!


	9. Abracadabra

**Chapter Nine: Abracadabra**

**Disclaimer: Something borrowed, something new, neither one making me any money.**

The deck of the _Enterprise_ shakes under Spock's feet once, twice, in rapid succession. Automatically he begins calculating the strength of the other ship's fire—mid-range phasers and not photon torpedoes, judging from the shock pattern.

"Security!" Jim Kirk says, slapping the button on the wall intercom. "Report!"

The tinny voice of Lt. Michaelson comes through the speaker.

"Captain, we're attempting to cut through the door lock to the bridge now."

"What about getting to the bridge through the turbolift?"

"It's been disabled, sir. Give us ten more minutes and we should be through."

The ship shakes again, harder this time, almost knocking Spock off his feet.

"We don't have ten minutes!" the captain says, slapping the intercom again. "Engineering! Scotty, is the auxiliary control room online?"

"Aye, captain. But it won't be if whoever's giving us the shakes doesn't stop soon."

Hooking his arm in the air toward Spock, the captain says, "Let's go," swiveling about and hurrying down the corridor toward the auxiliary control room near engineering.

Glancing over at Sybok, Spock takes a step back, an invitation—an insistence, really—that he follow.

Dimly he feels Nyota's fear—and her resolve not to let it affect her performance. Stretching out his thoughts, he tries to reach her but falls short, a runner able to see a finish line but without the stamina to reach it.

"What did you do to me?" he says to Sybok as they rush through the corridor, willing him to understand that he's referring to the earlier forced mind meld.

"Nothing that cannot be remedied," his brother says. "I did not intend to…harm you."

The auxiliary control room is a single deck up that they reach by an access stairwell. Moving swiftly to the external sensor monitor, Spock scans the vicinity around the _Enterprise_. There is the Altoran cargo ship, still tethered to the starboard bow. Hanging aft of the starboard nacelle is the new ship—larger than the cargo vessel but emitting a similar engine signature.

"Captain," Spock says, looking over at Kirk, "I believe we are being attacked by another Altoran ship."

"Dammit," the captain swears softly. "Probably one sent by their government. Why couldn't they wait on us to recover the stolen ship like we said we would? We have this under control."

He meets Spock's eye just as Spock lifts both eyebrows in surprise.

"Okay," the captain says. " _Almost_ under control."

Reaching forward, Kirk toggles on the communication override and says, "Altoran ship! This is Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship _Enterprise_. Cease your attacks at once! We are in the process of securing your cargo vessel. I repeat, cease fire."

Immediately the speaker crackles to life.

" _Enterprise_ ," a voice says. "Why haven't you responded to our hails? We are preparing to send a crew aboard the _D'Larii_ to pilot it home."

"Negative!" Kirk says, eyes wide. "We haven't finished removing the civilians. Some may be armed. We'll need more time—"

The _Enterprise_ gives a lurch—another phaser blast from the Altoran recovery ship. Captain Kirk looks to Spock and says, "How many are left on the cargo ship? Can we beam them over?"

Scanning, Spock tallies the biosigns.

And then in the corner of his eye, he sees it: an energy build-up in the cargo ship's impulse engine. As he watches, the matrix begins to fluctuate wildly.

At his shoulder, Sybok takes a sharp intake of breath.

"They've set it to overload," Sybok says before Spock can warn the captain. "You have to let me go over there now!"

The captain's expression is steely, his eyes unblinking. He darts a glance at Spock—a question—and suddenly Spock knows what he is asking.

"An explosion of that magnitude," Spock says, "and from that distance would do considerable damage to the _Enterprise_."

"You can stop it?"

Sybok answers first.

"I can," he says.

Another glance at Spock. He sees the captain weighing his options. In a few seconds, Kirk's posture shifts slightly and his expression hardens.

"Go with him," he says, and Spock nods and heads down the corridor to the transporter room, Sybok close behind.

They have five minutes, maybe less, before the Altoran cargo ship's engine goes critical. The odds that the Rihannsu and _V'tosh ka'tur_ can be reasoned with are too low to factor. The odds that he can reverse the overload without their support is even lower.

Scotty is waiting at the door of the transporter room, and as he moves swiftly behind the controls, Spock steps up onto the pad and watches as Sybok takes a place beside him. With a concerted effort, Spock calls out silently to Nyota, but his sense of her is muffled and faint.

His alarm at the void between them is more disturbing than beaming aboard a ship about to explode. _A remarkable realization—but one he has little time for._ At that moment, he feels the telltale tingle of transportation begin and for a fraction of a moment he is a stream of disassociated molecules, knowing nothing at all.

X

The café on North Point Street was already full by the time Sarek arrived. He stood in the doorway, scanning the crowd, when the maitre d' caught sight of him and waved him over.

"Ambassador. Right this way."

Pulling his arms close to his side, Sarek followed as the young man parted his way through the seated diners.

The café was comfortably familiar, with an upstairs dining loft half the size—and twice as private—as the noisier, more popular ground level. Over the past few months Sarek and Amanda had frequented it enough that the wait staff knew them by sight—though the maitre d' seemed oddly unable to remember that Sarek was an adjutant and not an ambassador.

"He's just flattering you," Amanda told him the last time he had tried to correct him. "Don't take him so seriously."

"But I am not the ambassador. It is improper that he addresses me that way."

Instead of taking his concern to heart, Amanda had laughed out loud. "Maybe he's practicing—for when you get that promotion."

 _The promotion._ It had hung over them ever since Ambassador Somak's assistant T'Mir announced her impending retirement. Either Sarek or the other adjutant Savil would be her replacement as the junior ambassador, a title that carried more responsibility than it might otherwise since Ambassador Somak spent most of his time on Vulcan.

Whether he was the one promoted or not mattered little to Sarek—at least in terms of the title. He found the work at the embassy surprisingly agreeable. Hammering out the thorny logistics of diplomacy turned out to be as satisfying as solving any other sort of equation. And if he was honest, the contact with alien species was stimulating, if at times tiring.

But for another reason the promotion did matter. Savil didn't hide his own skepticism about the programs Sarek had initiated—the Wednesday forums, for example, that Amanda conducted for the staff to make them more comfortable living among humans.

Savil's promotion would almost certainly guarantee the end of such initiatives—and most likely include Sarek being reassigned to the embassy on Vulcan.

"He'll want to clean house," Amanda had opined mournfully when they discussed the prospects. "And don't pretend you don't know what that means."

He had indeed known. And it caused him difficulty when he tried to meditate.

After T'Pau's visit he tried to prepare himself for the possibility of leaving San Francisco fairly soon, but to his consternation, he found himself spending more time, not less, with Amanda. At some level he knew he was being unfair to her, that their private, intimate time was like an investment in a future that neither of them ever put words to. Or she would think of it that way—would feel, perhaps, that he had been dishonest with her when he left at last.

The idea made him squirm.

The waiter started up the steps to the second floor dining area and Sarek looked automatically to the corner table they preferred. Sure enough, Amanda was already there—which was in itself an oddity. Normally he was the early one and she ran late, but today Ambassador Somak had contacted him as he was leaving the office.

"I went ahead and ordered for you," she said, looking up as he settled into his seat. "Last time you said you wanted to try the asparagus salad when we came back."

At his side the maître d' fussed with a cloth napkin, pulling it from the table and flicking it open with a flourish, reminding Sarek of a human magician.

The comparison would have been unusual if he hadn't recently seen an actual magician closely. For the most recent Wednesday forum, Amanda had hired several circus entertainers. Clowns, acrobats, and a tuxedoed magician wearing a top hat had mystified and bemused the Vulcan staff who bothered to attend.

As the maître d' draped the napkin over his lap, Sarek looked across the table and raised one eyebrow, anticipating Amanda's laughter when he told her how like a magic act this seemed.

She raised one eyebrow back.

When the maître d' walked away, she said, "What is it? You heard from the Ambassador?"

And just like that, the pleasurable moment evaporated, and in its place was the hard task of telling her the news.

"I did," he said, carefully taking a breath and composing his expression. As he did, he examined her own expression—her eyes slightly narrowed in concentration, her mouth parting slightly as she became very, very still.

With a leap of insight, he realized that she already knew what he was going to say—that something in the timbre of his voice, in his posture, in the way he hesitated a fraction of a second before looking her in the eye—had given him away.

To be read so clearly by someone else—to be known this well….and to have to walk away from it. He flushed in anger.

"So," she said, blinking once and looking down. "That's it then."

A statement of fact requiring no response, though Sarek knew he should at least attempt one.

But what to say? _That he was disappointed?_ She knew that, surely. _That he was angry not to be the one chosen?_ What did that imply? That he was caught up in some sort of personal competition with Savil—an unseemly motive for wanting the position?

Or perhaps something closer to the truth, that when Ambassador Somak gave him his decision, Sarek had simply bowed his head and nodded, the image of perfect equanimity—his silence a complete sham. That even as he thanked the Ambassador for calling, he felt his mood darkening dangerously, his control so shaky that he sat in his office for half an hour afterwards, slowing his breathing until he could talk without giving away his distress.

From the corner of his eye he saw a waiter approach bearing their meal. He hardly looked up as the artfully arranged plate of grilled asparagus was placed in front of him. Amanda, he noticed, had ordered the same meal for herself.

Picking up her fork, she said, "Does Savil know?"

"I assume so," he said, picking up his own fork. "Though I haven't spoken to him yet."

"And when—"

She faltered then, and Sarek said, "Somak arrives next week to make the official announcement. After that, I suspect I will be recalled to Vulcan for reassignment."

She nodded, not meeting his eyes. Instead, she focused on her plate of uneaten salad, one hand idly cradling her fork, the other curled in her lap.

"I guess that's it for me, too," she said, and Sarek said, "When Somak arrives, I will recommend that you be retained as an aide. There is no reason you should lose your position if I leave."

"I wasn't talking about my job," she said, looking up at him at last.

There it was, the unspoken subtext that underlined all their conversations, even though they never said words like _future_ and _marriage_ and _together_.

They ate in silence then, the way two Vulcans would. That irony was not lost on Sarek.

If the meal had any flavor at all, he couldn't say. The asparagus felt like chips of wood in his mouth, unpalatable and difficult to swallow. Amanda picked at her meal for a few minutes and then put her fork on her plate, as if the food had defeated her somehow.

"Would you care for dessert?" he asked. She often ended a meal with a concoction heavily dependent on refined sugar for flavor, a peccadillo he had once cautioned her against but now found endearing.

She shook her head without meeting his gaze and said, "I have a headache. I should probably just go on home."

Almost on cue the waiter appeared, check in hand, and Sarek moved to scoot back Amanda's chair but she was too quick for him, standing up and heading to the stairwell. He followed her, startled.

 _Anger?_ In the past when she had been angry with him, she had never hesitated to tell him. Her headache, then, must account for her rushing forward, her footsteps almost strangely purposeful, unlike the playful lingering that she often did after they shared a meal and walked back to her apartment.

At the first street corner she paused, waiting on the pedestrian lights to change in her favor, and she startled him again by turning to him and lifting her face to meet his.

"Really," she said, her brows knit faintly, "you don't need to walk me all the way home. I wouldn't want you to have to go so far out of your way."

Her words were surprisingly hurtful. And dishonest, too—though he could not have articulated how. Or how he knew that.

"You wish to be alone tonight?"

Over the past few months, they had slipped into a series of unspoken expectations about their time together. Late meals often ended with them in her apartment, drinking tea and continuing a conversation started at dinner, sometimes leading to sexual intimacy and her invitation that he stay the night. Had something changed?

She bit her lip.

"I think it's best," she said.

The light changed and the crowd around them surged into the road. And just like that, she was gone.

For a moment he weighed the logic of following her, of insisting that she hear him out. But his imagination failed when he tried to picture what he would say.

As he walked back down Hyde Street he pulled his heavy cloak around him, shivering in the cool of the San Francisco evening. He would be leaving for the comfortable warmth of Vulcan soon—and as T'Pau had suggested, spending his energy caring for his ageing parents and his young son. Nothing more.

That night he was uncharacteristically restless. After a few minutes, he abandoned any pretense of meditation and sat in the creaky wooden chair in his living area, a mug of cooling tea in one hand, his eyes unfocused. He was surprised when the weak morning light slipped through the blinds.

"This concerns you," his secretary said as he unlocked his office. She held out a slip of paper—an obvious printout of an electronic communiqué. The Ambassador, most likely, already giving him the details about his new assignment. Sarek carried the paper with him, glancing at Amanda's empty desk in the corner, before he sat down to read.

_Please thank Adjutant Sarek for the opportunity to serve the Vulcan people as a cultural attaché. I hope that my contributions were beneficial in some way. Amanda Grayson_

He read it twice before he understood what it meant.

She was leaving. Resigning. Quitting. The past tense in the second terse sentence was as clear as any goodbye.

Had she been planning during their dinner last night to depart this way, with no discussion, no opportunity for him tell her that he regretted the way his future was evolving without her?

His chest felt heavy and he leaned forward slightly, to ease the ache near his heart.

She was being the logical one. She was the one doing what T'Pau had advised, moving down a path that was different from the one he was starting out on. He should be relieved—humans weren't always rational to this degree. He had imagined her being angry or unhappy when confronted with their inevitable separation. What he hadn't imagined was her taking the initiative and leaving first.

All morning he was stretched as taut as a wire, waiting for her to call or walk through the door, laughing, perhaps, about the letter.

"Of course I didn't mean I was leaving right this minute," she would say, and after he scolded her gently for causing him distress, they would resume planning the next Wednesday forum, or he would offer to take her to lunch, and that would be that—they would resume what they had now. For now.

By late afternoon when she hadn't contacted him he was feeling the first inklings of something akin to panic—a fluttery conviction that events were spiraling out of control. What if she were truly ill, if the headache she had complained of was a portent of something serious?

But no, the resignation letter had not been the words of someone too ill to think reasonably, sensibly. She had intended those words. Each one.

After work he unlocked the front door of his apartment and made his way to his bedroom without turning on any lights, sitting on his bed, thinking. The pain in his side was gnawing, nauseating, as if he had consumed something spoiled. Had he eaten at all today? He couldn't remember.

With a sudden motion, he fished his comm from his pocket and dialed her number. After a single ring, the voice message clicked on and he stuttered in surprise, "Amanda, call me." And then he added, "Please."

It was fairly late by then, which explained why she didn't return his call. Or so he hoped.

But the next day he left three more messages in her voice queue and still he heard nothing from her. The last time he called, he shut the connection without leaving a message and turned off his computer with a jerk, almost savagely.

"I have business in the city," he told his secretary as he passed her desk. "If anyone tries to contact me—"

"I will forward your messages to you," she finished for him. He had no illusions that T'Lin approved of Amanda or his barely-disguised attachment to her, but he noted a tone of sympathy in her voice and he flashed her a look of gratitude.

The twenty-minute walk to Amanda's apartment was spent in mental rehearsals of what he would say when she opened her door. If he could explain why his reassignment to Vulcan was best for them both, if he could express his gratitude to her for all she had done for him, for what she meant to him, perhaps they could part with a measure of tranquility. If not at once, then in retrospect, once they had moved past this knotty hurt place in their memories of each other.

Her door loomed up before he was entirely ready to face her and he stood for a moment, watching a couple pushing a baby in an old-fashioned pram down the sidewalk. Reaching out, he pressed the door chime.

In the distance he could hear the echo of the bell, and then a thump and a scrape, as if someone were dragging something heavy across the floor. To his astonishment, the door swung open a few seconds later and an unshaven young human male peered out.

"Can I help you?" the young man asked, clearly mystified.

Like a tsunami, a wave of fury threatened to knock Sarek over. He swallowed hard and narrowed his eyes.

"Amanda," he said. "I must speak with her."

Everything he had planned to say was vaporized by the heat of his anger. Of course he had no right to claim her—they had no agreement, not even an informal one.

But that she had already _replaced_ him—

He looked down and saw that one fist was clenched, his other hand shaking.

"There's nobody named Amanda here," the young man said. "Just me, and I moved in this morning."

Almost like something a magician might do—turning a colorful scarf into a flock of doves, or pouring a pitcher of water into empty air—Sarek felt his fury transform into a different emotion entirely—a confusion so complete that he was stunned.

"Where is she?" he managed to stammer after a moment.

"Don't look at me," the young man said. "I don't even know who she is."

He shut the door then, without waiting for Sarek to respond.

On the walk back to the Vulcan compound—and then later in his apartment—he sifted again and again through what had happened. He didn't doubt that the young man—a university student, from the looks of him—was telling the truth.

What he couldn't get his head around was what that meant. She had given up her job at the embassy—had obviously vacated her apartment. Was she even still in San Francisco?

Who would know?

He quickly exhausted his list of possible contacts. The assistant principal where Amanda had run an afternoon tutoring program said her contract ended with the school year a month ago. Sarek thanked him abruptly and stared at the comm in his hand. Why hadn't he known that? The only friend of Amanda's that he knew was a young teacher who sounded suspicious and more than a little alarmed when he called, though it was possible that her mood was affected by the fact that it was 0100 in the morning. At any rate, she claimed not to know where Amanda was or how he could go about finding her.

For a second night he hardly slept. His skin was irritated and hot, as if he were sunburned, and he kicked at the thin sheet on his bed and wadded up the coverlet in frustration. How unlike her bed this one was—narrow and unyielding, and cold.

Her bed was always surprisingly warm. His first night in it he had spent watching her sleep in his arms, replaying their tentative lovemaking beforehand in his mind, the buzz of wonder and delight keeping him awake.

Or the aftereffects of the cinnamon. It hadn't taken Amanda long to identify the source of his mild intoxication. Several days later she had breezed into the office and announced that she understood why he had been—in her words—so _frisky_ after their Moroccan meal.

"It doesn't affect all Vulcans," she said, settling into her workspace, "but apparently it affects you. I guess I'll have to keep a stash of cinnamon rolls handy in case you ever come over again."

The pure notes of her laughter echoed in the small office.

"And you know this how?" he asked, but she merely grinned and said, "I have my sources."

She said the same thing the next time they found themselves in her apartment, in her bed. Their newfound intimacy was like any diplomatic dance—overtures and negotiations, forays into what each found pleasurable or necessary. "Here," she might say, cupping his hand under her breast, using the language of touch to show him how to make her arch her back against him, how to move against her so that his pleasure was as intense as her own.

They explored the landscape of each other's bodies with their fingers and tongues. She startled him once, bringing him to an unexpected, violent climax by nipping his ear lobe.

"How—" he said when he could catch his breath again, and she put one finger to his lips to silence him and said, "I have my sources."

Indeed.

He comforted and tormented himself all night with such memories. By daylight he was already calling in favors from his Federation contacts and an hour later he had a ride on a star cruiser to Vulcan—a trip of less than half an hour versus the six hour flight a commercial shuttle would have taken.

If T'Pau was surprised to see him when he showed up at the door of her home on the outskirts of Shi'Kahr, she hid it well. Instead, she invited him in.

"Tea?" she asked as he chose a seat in her spartan living area. Two backless benches faced each other, a low table between them, with no other furniture or decorative objects in the room, spare even by Vulcan standards.

"I do not require any," he said, recalling her words to him not that long ago.

"Very well," she said, sitting down and placing her hands in her lap. Sarek could feel her dark eyes watching him closely and he took a breath and looked up.

"I am sure you know," he started, careful to leach any emotion from his voice, "that Savil has been named the junior ambassador."

T'Pau said nothing, not that Sarek expected her to. He had simply stated the obvious as a rhetorical entry into the heart of his message. They both knew that.

"I am concerned that he may not be an adequate replacement for T'Mir."

At that T'Pau raised her eyebrow. He had surprised her.

"Your reasons?"

"Although Savil may be a capable administrator—"

T'Pau interrupted him with a wave of her hand. "Get to your point."

"He does not represent Vulcan ideals."

Again he had surprised T'Pau. She shifted on her bench.

"That is serious accusation, particularly against someone charged as a representative of Vulcan. Do not make it lightly, Sarek."

He bowed his head in agreement.

"I do not. Savil's understanding of IDIC does not include tolerance for humans. On multiple occasions I have heard him make disparaging remarks about our human counterparts in the diplomatic services. He has absented himself from 87% of the human-sponsored functions supported by the Federation. He has been openly critical of the efforts of our cultural attaché to understand human customs and traditions—"

"Stop."

Sarek blinked and waited for T'Pau to continue.

"If these accusations are true," she said slowly, "then why has Ambassador Somak not remedied the situation?"

Sarek knew he was treading on tricky ground and he gathered his thoughts before answering.

"The Ambassador may be unaware of Savil's…prejudice."

"You cannot be the only staff member to have noticed," T'Pau countered, and Sarek said, "Some of the staff may share Savil's point of view."

T'Pau sat up a fraction straighter. Sarek waited.

"How much of your concern is based on _personal_ disappointment about Savil's promotion?"

It was an offensive notion—implying that his logic was faulty or that his honesty was in question. But Sarek knew that T'Pau asked not because she thought it likely but because she was already preparing her rebuttal when she brought the charges to the High Council. He felt his heart leap up with that realization.

"I admit to being disappointed," he said without hesitation, "because I am the best choice to fill that position. If Ambassador Somak cannot be convinced of that, then I accept whatever posting I am given."

Nothing about Amanda—about his hopes that he remain on Earth. As far as T'Pau knew, he had taken her earlier advice to cultivate other, more appropriate, relationships.

Or so he thought.

"And the Earth woman," T'Pau said suddenly. "She does not factor into your trip here today?"

Too late, he tried to control his expression of dismay and astonishment. Of course T'Pau's observers in the embassy were keeping her apprised of what went on there, and even if they weren't, her powers of observation and intuition were considerable. He opened his mouth to reply.

Lifting her hand to stop him, she said, "Say nothing. That way I cannot answer if the Council questions your motives."

She stood up slowly and made her way to a door leading to what he assumed was a study or a rest chamber. Because she had not dismissed him, he sat, ramrod straight, and tried to quiet the pounding in his side.

_If she were successful—_

If T'Pau convinced the Council and Ambassador Somak to rescind Savil's promotion, that didn't automatically assure Sarek the job. T'Pau had made her preference clear before, that he return to Vulcan and take a more active role in caring for the members of his family.

On the other hand, if he became the junior ambassador, he was free in a way that he had not been free before—free to decide whether or not his future could include Amanda.

When T'Pau returned 47minutes later, he tried—and failed—to hear her news without any emotion.

"Prove yourself worthy," she said as she stood in the doorway, "of the Council's trust in you."

Her words were as succinct and spare as the furnishings in her home. Sarek nodded once and left for the transport station, booking a return shuttle that arrived in San Francisco as the afternoon sun was dipping below the bay.

Now he turned to finding Amanda in earnest. The local law officials had no information and looked at him askance when he tried to report her missing.

Getting a release of comm numbers and addresses of the Graysons in the Seattle area proved more difficult than he had anticipated—that information being protected under several privacy laws.

"I can give you the numbers of all the Graysons in the country," an acquaintance in the telecommunications sector told him, "but I can't give you anything that identifies who they are or where they live."

Reluctantly Sarek started thumbing through the national public comm listings for Graysons and was halfway through sketching out an algorithm for calling them all before he realized how futile the idea was.

In the end he was helped by an Andorian businessman he had shepherded through several legal barriers so his company could sell a digital tracker to Starfleet and the civilian military. By midnight Sarek had one of the devices in his hand and was calling Amanda's comm.

As he expected, she didn't answer. It didn't matter. The small Andorian device in his hand piggybacked on the signal and came up with a series of numbers that pinpointed where her comm was at that moment, an address in Seattle.

He showered and was able to sleep then, the first time in three days. When he woke, creaky eyed, stiff necked, he was resolute.

On the walk to the transport station at the corner of Marina Avenue he watched the early risers on their way to work, men and women for whom today was just another ordinary day. Such musings were unlike him—straying, as they did, into speculation. And emotional speculation at that. Once the shuttle took off, he closed his eyes and let his mind clear.

The short flight to Seattle was more than enough time to know what he wanted. But what did Amanda want?

As he hired a ground car, he laid out his plan. He would explain how logical it was that she accept him as a suitable mate.

They already knew that they were comfortable companions— _friends_. Their personalities, while different, were complementary, another logical reason to formalize the relationship.

And physical intimacy? As he drove to the coordinates the Andorian device had indicated, he thought about the night she had slipped into his apartment as he lay in a _pon farr_ haze, and he felt his face flush in both shame and desire. That she had been willing to come to him then—

And had been more than willing to explore physical intimacy with him since…He would argue that in every way that mattered, they were suited for each other.

If she refused? If she indicated that she was not interested in a committed relationship, he would accept her decision and bother her no more, walk away, as the humans said, _with no questions asked._

The driveway of the Grayson house was slick and black with misty dew. The sky was gray and overcast, the trees on the edge of the yard dripping from an early rain. Sarek shivered and pulled his cloak around him as picked his way along the flagstone walkway to the front door.

Pressing the door chime, he listened as footsteps crossed a wooden floor. _Not Amanda._ He knew Amanda's footsteps from memory, knew the length of her stride and the heft of her weight, recognized whether she was sad or excited or merely lost in thought by the pace of her forward motion.

As the door swung open, he saw an older woman with short graying hair styled back from her face, her eyes narrowed, one hand on the doorframe as if to keep him from entering.

Amanda's mother, obviously, though Sarek had never seen her before.

"Who are you?" Amanda's mother said. She sounded annoyed—the way humans sometimes did when they wanted to mask their anxiety.

What had Amanda said about her mother recently? That she didn't take no for an answer?

And what he had observed about Amanda? That she was the same way?

Well. So was he.

Gone was his plan to present his logical reasons. Gone was his plan to give Amanda a choice, to quietly walk away if she turned him down. Gone was his fiction that what he felt was based on rational thought. He _needed_ her.

"I am S'chin T'gai Sarek," he said. "The junior ambassador from Vulcan. I've come for Amanda."

X X

They rematerialize in the cramped engine room, the smell of fuel heavy in the air, the noise almost painful. Standing at the control console are three Rihannsu, their backs to Sybok and Spock.

"I do not wish to harm you," Spock says loudly, a phaser in his outstretched hand. The Rihannsu whirl around, and taking note of Spock's phaser, lower their arms slowly.

"There is no reason to do this," Sybok says stepping toward them, his palms raised like a supplicant. "Shut down the engine."

"No!" one of the Rihannsu, a thick-necked stout man, shouts out defiantly. "Raska'ot has not been able to control the _Enterprise_. And now more Federation lackeys are here. Better to die with honor than allow ourselves to be taken as prisoners."

"The Altorans want their ship," Sybok says, advancing another step. "Nothing more. We will not be prisoners."

The stout Rihannsu shakes his head.

"Stay back, Sybok," he says, the fingers of one hand hovering over the controls. From his place across the room, Sybok can see that the feedback loop leading to an engine overload is on a timer. If he wants to, the Rihannsu can bypass the timer and blow the ship up right away with the touch of a finger. "You are doing the Federation's bidding now," the Rihannsu says.

"I am taking us to a new world," Sybok says, his arms lifted. "To a place where you can raise your children."

"It is too late," the man says, his hand trailing along the edge of the console.

Sybok weighs the possibilities. If Spock stuns any of the Rihannsu, the other two will have sufficient time to hit the detonation button. If he can lure the three away from the console with a diversion, Spock could advance in time to stop the countdown.

Turning to Spock, he lowers his shields and brushes the edges of his brother's mind.

 _Don't turn away!_ Sybok says, and he feels his brother pause. In a flash, Sybok shows him what they need to do—the diversion, the timer disabled.

But before he can act, he hears the click of a phase pistol in the air behind him.

"Drop it," a familiar voice says, and Spock lets his phaser slip from his fingers and clatter to the floor.

"Tri'eska!" Sybok says, relief flooding through him. "Help me stop this!"

He moves toward the control console and feels Tri'eska's strong fingers grip his forearm.

"There is no future," she says, not letting go of his arm. "It is better this way."

"There _is_ a future," Sybok says, meeting her eyes, her sorrow and determination making his heart race. "The Vulcans—"

"Raska'ot says there is nothing at the coordinates for Vulcan. Is that a lie?"

Swallowing, Sybok says, "No. You know it isn't. When I felt the Moment—"

Tri'eska takes a deep breath and nods.

"Then our journey leads us here to this moment," she says. "To our moment."

At his side, he sees Spock flinch. _The timer_.

"We still have a future," Sybok says, reaching through his bond with Tri'eska to her pain. _There are always possibilities,_ he says silently, but she mentally pulls back, unwilling to let go of her resolve.

In the corner of his consciousness he feels another presence, this one as warm and lively as Tri'eska is cool and composed. _Davara, hurrying to the engine room._

Hearing her at the door, Sybok reaches out and she rushes into his arms.

"It is time to die?" she asks aloud, but Sybok doesn't answer, just smoothes her hair back from her face with his hand.

Davara buries her face in his shoulder and Sybok looks around at the three Rihannsu standing like a tableau at the console, Spock motionless to his side, kept there by Tri'eska's pistol.

If he could only find the words to end this.

"Do you trust me?"

His eyes are on Tri'eska as he says it, but his words are meant for everyone in the room.

"If you do," Sybok continues, "then you must believe me when I tell you that this is not our future. An honorable death may be appealing, but an honorable life is more so. Death comes soon enough. But today is not that day."

In his arms he feels Davara trembling. In his mind he feels her trembling, too—and Tri'eska, despite her bravado.

With a shuddering breath Tri'eska shifts the target of the pistol from Spock to the Rihannsu at the control console.

"Stand aside," Tri'eska says. The stout man starts to react but she waves the pistol and he steps back.

That's all Spock seems to need. In two strides he's at the console, his fingers flying over the tabs. In another moment he's finished, the whine of the engine overload powering down.

"We thought you were dead," Davara says, a sob in her voice, clutching Sybok around the waist. "We felt you—"

"You are not going to get rid of me that easily," he says, pressing his chin to the top of her head. Feeling Spock watching him, he adds, "After all, we're family. You can't just wave your hand and make your family disappear."


	10. The Ties That Bond

**Chapter 10: The Ties That Bond  
**

She is suffocating.

With a gasp, Nyota opens her eyes. Her arms are bound oddly to her side; something hot and wet and heavy is folded around her neck. Gulping twice, she scissors her legs free and kicks.

At once her ankle throbs so hard that she cries out.

The painkillers McCoy had given her earlier have obviously worn off. She winces, tugging her arms from under the covers on the bed, pulling the duvet away from her neck.

_Better, though the room is still oppressively hot._

Sitting up, Nyota notes the faint flicker of light coming through the door that connects the sleeping quarters to the sitting area.

_Spock, meditating in front of his asenoi._

Nyota glances at the chronometer she keeps on a small table by the bed. When she went to sleep five hours ago, Spock was already sitting cross-legged in meditation. That he's still there is alarming.

Gingerly she slides to the edge of the bed and tests her weight on her sore ankle. Her own fault, really. What had Spock said earlier, that her actions had been illogical, that the captain and the security team had everything under control?

"You're one to talk!" she had retorted hotly, stretched out on a biobed in sickbay, Spock standing stiffly beside her, a look of barely controlled fury etched on his features. "And don't tell me that you were the logical choice to beam into a ticking time bomb!"

At some level she knows her criticism is unfair, but then so is his. While Spock and Sybok had beamed onto the Altoran ship's engineering section to stop the self-destruct sequence, the bridge crew of the _Enterprise_ had listened as security slowly but surely cut through the jimmied door controls. The moment the door slid open, Nyota saw Captain Kirk standing there, security officers flanking him.

The Rihannsu who called himself Raska'ot shot wide with his disruptor. Taking advantage of his inattention, Nyota sprang up and threw out her leg to trip him. Using her own momentum as leverage, she grabbed his shoulder and tugged—and he tumbled over.

A move she had used to great effect more than once in a game of Parrises Squares.

And which had twisted her ankle before, too.

Worth it, though. The other Rihannsu were quickly disarmed—Lt. Michaelson and his security team herding them soon afterwards to the brig.

Through it all Nyota had the nagging awareness that something was awry—not with the situation, but with her. And then as two medics helped her onto a stretcher and maneuvered her down the hall, she knew what it was: Spock had been absent from her consciousness the entire time.

No, not completely absent, but muted in such a way that she had trouble sensing him unless she did nothing else but focus. Like trying to see in dim light, or to feel something with her hands in thick gloves.

She started to get off the moving stretcher.

"Hang on!" one of the medics said, a young man she didn't recognize. "Sickbay's just around the corner."

"Something's happened!" she said, but the medic put his hand on her shoulder and pressed her back.

"Look," he said, "we're here. You can relax now."

McCoy's face loomed up and she took a deep breath.

"Something's wrong!" she said and McCoy nodded.

"Yep," he said, directing the medics to lift her onto the biobed. "You twisted that same ankle. I warned you not to play so hard."

"Not with me," she said, impatiently shifting as the medics moved away, "with Spock."

"More than usual?" McCoy said dryly, lifting one eyebrow. "Well, speak of the devil."

He backed away and Spock was suddenly there.

"I thought—" Nyota began, but she faltered, unsure what she was going to say.

It was then that she noticed how angry Spock was—not bothering to blank his features or disguise his agitation. That, more than the anger itself, frightened her.

Continued to frighten her as McCoy bandaged her ankle, and later, as Spock helped her back to her quarters. His own quarters, and most of those on deck six, had been given over to housing the _V'tosh ka'tur_ and the Rihannsu after the Altorans reclaimed the stolen cruiser. As far as Nyota knew, Sybok was in the brig with the others who had seized control of the bridge.

"What's going on?" she had asked as Spock set up his _asenoi_ in the corner of her sitting area. "What's happened to you?"

But the pain meds McCoy had insisted she take before leaving sickbay were starting to pull her down, down, and she limped to the bedroom and fell asleep almost immediately.

Until now, coming awake drenched with sweat—the environmental controls either broken, or more likely, ratcheted up as high as they will go, Spock's sensitivity to cold more acute the more stressed he is.

He doesn't move as she shuffles slowly out of the bedroom to the nearest chair. For a moment she thinks he must have fallen asleep, his head tipped down almost to his chest, his hands curled together in his lap.

He's wearing his meditation robe, a thick black tunic with the family signet embroidered down the front hem. His eyes are closed, but as Nyota watches, they flutter open and he says, "I should be getting back to the bridge."

"Spock," she says, her voice breaking unexpectedly, "don't do this. Don't leave now."

"You require my assistance?"

"I require an answer! What's going on?"

Spock stands and begins unfastening his robe.

"We are currently on course to New Vulcan. Despite the captain's concern about transporting so many potentially hostile passengers, Starfleet ordered the _Enterprise_ —"

"I mean," she says, crossing her arms and hunching forward, "what's going on with _us_? Why is it so hard to… _feel_ you? Where are you?"

He shakes his head slightly, like someone disturbed by a gnat.

"Uncertain," he says, glancing over at her and meeting her eye. "An artifact of the mind meld with Sybok. If the situation is not…resolved…by the time we arrive at the colony, I will seek out a healer."

He steps past her toward the sleeping quarters, his meditation robe in his hand.

"But I don't understand how a mind meld could do this," she calls after him. Silence, and then an indistinct noise as he hangs up his robe in the closet. He comes back out into the sitting area a few moments later, tugging his science blues over his head.

"If you are in pain, the doctor left these for you." Spock indicates a small bottle on the desk. "You have been relieved of duty until he clears you."

"Spock!" she says, but he is already out the door.

They so rarely argue that for a full minute Nyota sits slumped in the chair, like someone stunned. Was it even an argument? More like a dodge, a refusal to engage. More the way he had been when she first knew him, when he sometimes skittered away if her questions crossed the line from personal to intimate.

With a start she realizes how comfortable—and comforted—she has become with him in her mind since their bonding, and how quiet her thoughts are without his steady undercurrent.

Not just quiet, but lonely. Desolate.

Her first impulse is to hop up and follow him, insist that he talk about his obvious anger, about his not so obvious grief.

But her ankle wobbles when she tries to walk on it. Just as well, she thinks, making her way slowly back to the bed. If she knows anything about Vulcans, it's that they can be stubborn. There's no such thing as forcing a conversation about anything, no matter how critical she might judge it.

Better to corral her impatience and wait for him to come to her, as long that takes.

**X X**

She knew him better than anyone else. Better, Sarek admitted to himself in his most private moments, than he knew himself.

Even without telepathy, Amanda could read any shift in his emotions, no matter how subtle, could anticipate his line of reasoning without the need for words.

"You aren't that hard to figure out," she said once when he commented on it. "Or maybe that's something humans do better than Vulcans—seeing through that wall you spend so much time putting up."

She had laughed lightly at the time, an acknowledgement that she was joking, but later he decided that she might be right. When he had first arrived on Earth he had attended a lecture by a well-known psychologist—a lengthy and overly-detailed description of the way humans interpreted facial expressions and body language. Apparently deficits in those abilities were quite debilitating, requiring special training to overcome.

At the time he had dismissed the lecturer's conclusions as overblown. Of all the hundreds of humans Sarek had met by then, none seemed to suffer from a lack of emotional understanding. Vulcans, on the other hand—

Perhaps it was because they _were_ telepathic that Vulcans were so careful to mask their feelings. After all, bondmates and family already knew what the other was thinking and feeling. Why broadcast what was already known?

Still, as gifted as Amanda was at "figuring him out," Sarek looked forward to actually bonding with her, not just because it legitimized their relationship in the eyes of traditionalists, but because he sometimes had trouble "figuring" her out, knowing what was going on in her mind.

Like now. They had been discussing their upcoming bonding ceremony when Amanda's expression had gone distant and unfocused.

"Something troubles you," Sarek said, and she shook her head and seemed to pull herself back from wherever she had been.

"No," she said, a smile flitting across her lips, "I'm fine. It's just—"

He waited for her to continue, and when she didn't, he said, "Amanda, I do not know your thoughts unless you tell them to me."

That same fleeting smile, and then she said, "Well, it's just that I was hoping we could do this quietly. You know, elope? Slip off, just the two of us? Without all this fuss?"

Sarek was genuinely confused. Surely she knew that being bonded required the services of a healer, that there was no possibility that they could _slip off, just the two_ of them? Bondings, like weddings, were public events, designed to signal the expansion of the clan, and on a more practical level, to forge the mental ties necessary for a successful pairing.

Amanda wasn't just being bonded to Sarek but to his family. She would sense his mother and father, his distant relatives, through his mental connections to them. Excluding them from the ceremony was unheard of.

He shifted in his seat, prepared to explain this to her. To his surprise, she held up her hand to stop him.

"I know," she said. "It's a big deal. I wasn't saying I wouldn't do it. I was just saying I'd like it better if it were more…private."

He tilted his head and looked at her closely. She never ceased to amaze him. His assumption had always been that as extroverted as she was—as comfortable in crowds, as adept at talking to strangers and friends alike—she would actually enjoy a large bonding ceremony. He, on the other hand, felt a frisson of uneasiness whenever he imagined the gathering—such an affront to his own natural reserve.

For the first time, he questioned whether it was actually required. After all, he and Amanda were already a non-traditional couple. More than one relative had raised an eyebrow when he introduced her to them.

Until now he had thought to quiet some of their concerns by honoring Vulcan traditions. But if she preferred not to—

Coming to a decision, he said, "I'll call the healer. She may agree to do the bonding with just us present."

Amanda threw her arms around him and he sensed her relief.

His own misgivings were considerable, however. His mother, in particular, would be displeased.

Even so, his primary concern was Amanda's comfort. He kept his face carefully neutral and said nothing else.

If T'Quill, the healer, was surprised at his request when he contacted her, she hid it well. Instead, she consulted her schedule and Sarek set a date. As soon as he could arrange a leave of absence, he and Amanda traveled to Vulcan and opened up one of the visitor's apartments at the family compound on the outskirts of Shi'Kahr. Even though they planned a private ceremony, Sarek wanted it to be at the family place of _koon' ut'kalifee_.

Amanda had been there once before, when she met Sybok—and when she had announced to Sarek that they should get bonded and create a family for him.

Sarek still thought of that moment often.

He thought of it again when Sybok arrived—a short visit T'Ria reluctantly allowed after Sarek pressured her.

Amanda was almost jittery beforehand, arranging a room, ordering special foods that her Vulcan friend at the embassy had assured her were favorites with children—vegetable crisps shaped like animals, protein tabs that glowed in the dark.

"To hear you talk," Amanda said, giggling as she set them in the stasis unit, "Vulcan children are never allowed to have any fun. But these are cute!"

"If by fun you mean wasting time with frivolous pursuits," he replied, "then Vulcan children do not have fun. These food stuffs—"

He gestured to the crisp shaped like a bird that Amanda was holding up in her hand.

"—are educational as well as nutritious. That one, for instance, accurately represents the proportions of the common _va'khen_."

"Nonsense," Amanda said airily, taking a nibble of the crisp. "But you go right on believing that if you want to."

She stayed in the apartment to prepare an evening meal while Sarek took the flitter to the local transport station to get Sybok. A stocky, somber boy, Sybok stood at his grandmother's side as Sarek stowed his travel bag and opened the passenger door for him.

"You are welcome to join us," Sarek said to T'Ria. _Respectful, polite, and untrue_. From the expression on T'Ria's face, Sarek knew she was equally unwilling to spend time together. Even before her daughter died, she had resisted Sarek's overtures.

"Obey your father," T'Ria said. Sybok looked up at her once before nodding and climbing into the flitter.

"I have been informed," T'Ria said when Sarek closed the flitter door, "that you are being bonded to a human."

At once Sarek was on his guard.

"I am," he said.

"I care little for what you do," T'Ria said, "except where it concerns my grandson. If I had been aware of your plans, I would not have let Sybok come. Please be advised that if you wish to see him in the future, it will be without your human bondmate."

If they had been alone, Sarek would have responded immediately—and with undisguised anger— but Sybok was watching through the window of the flitter, his dark, luminous eyes following everything closely.

Instead, Sarek took a breath and willed his racing heart to slow down. When he could trust himself to speak normally, he said, "Your… _request_ …is illogical. My bondmate is of no concern of yours."

"If she is a human, she is of every concern," T'Ria said. To Sarek's shock, the older woman's voice shook.

"I fail to see why—" he began.

"You do not know Sybok as I do," she said, peering into Sarek's face intently. "He is emotional and high strung, despite all our efforts to train him properly. I lay no blame for this on you," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "He is, I am afraid, his mother's child."

Sarek's mouth was dry—with anxiety or disgust, he wasn't certain. That Sybok's mother had been a member of the _V'tosh ka'tur_ was something that both shamed and worried him.

"So you see," T'Ria said, taking his silence now as agreement, "why he does not need exposure to humans. They are far too volatile a race for someone as…susceptible…as Sybok."

Sarek headed around to the other side of the flitter and T'Ria called out, "If you wish to continue to see your son, you must agree to this."

All the way back to the family compound T'Ria's words haunted him. Sybok sat as silent as a stone, his face turned away as if he was curious about the landscape whizzing past. Sarek wasn't fooled.

Both seemed relieved that Amanda was standing in the front doorway when they drove up.

"Are you hungry?" she said, leaning down to make eye contact with Sybok. The little boy glanced back at Sarek—a clear entreaty—and Sarek nodded.

"Yes, please," Sybok said, and Amanda let her fingers drift over the hair on the top of his head as she shepherded him into the apartment.

Throughout the meal she peppered Sybok with questions—how did he like school? What was his favorite thing to study? Who were his friends? Did he have a pet?

At first he seemed reluctant to answer. Of course, Sarek thought. T'Ria would have taught him Vulcan etiquette at meals—silence and a sense of purpose.

However, Sybok quickly adapted, letting his reserve drop away like an unnecessary cloak. By the end of the meal, his father was astonished to see him return one of Amanda's grins.

The memory of T'Ria's warning spoiled the moment.

That night Amanda insisted on a ritual she called _tucking in_ , which to Sarek's eye consisted chiefly of prolonging bedtime. Although Sarek assured her that Sybok could read sufficiently to entertain himself, Amanda offered to read a short work of fiction to him—and to Sarek's astonishment, Sybok not only agreed but sat curled at her side as she read aloud.

_Tucking in_ also included lifting and smoothing the bed covers in ways that apparently affected their function, offering sips of water, and saying certain incantations to ward against insects or nightmares. Or so Sarek thought at first. Only later, as he waited for Amanda to rejoin him in the living area, did he finally understand the purpose of so much activity.

Amanda was attempting to bond with Sybok in the human way.

He told her as much when she handed him a cup of tea and settled on the sofa beside him.

"Yes, I guess I am. It's the only way I can."

The strains of the day and the relief of the evening put Sarek in a rare contemplative mood. Or rather, in a rare mood to share his contemplations. He circled Amanda with one arm and allowed himself to feel contentment with her there beside him, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders.

"Not the only way. If my own bond were stronger with him, you would share it once you and I are bonded. However, my connection to Sybok is tenuous," he said, a note of wistfulness in his voice. "I can hardly sense his presence at all."

"Is that unusual?" Amanda said, tipping her face up to look at him more closely.

"I am always aware of my own parents," he said. "And always have been. I have had little opportunity to develop the same awareness of Sybok."

"But you can, can't you?"

"Uncertain. Family bonds are not deliberate or chosen, like the bonds between mates."

He paused a moment, aware that Amanda was still watching him.

"Although," he added, "one kind strengthens another. Having family nearby helps when a pair chooses to form a bond. That's one purpose of the ceremony itself."

"Oh!"

Looking down, he saw distress on Amanda's face. Too late he realized that she must have taken his words as a criticism of her decision to bond with him privately. He opened his mouth to reassure her but she spoke first.

"You know," she said slowly, "would you mind very much if we went ahead and planned that big traditional Vulcan _kal'telan_ after all?"

"It isn't required, Amanda."

"For us, maybe. But maybe it _is_ required for Sybok."

"Explain."

"You said it yourself. Having the family there will strengthen all the bonds between us."

"You are assuming that my bond with Sybok will also be strengthened. There is no guarantee of that."

"I'm not thinking of you at all," Amanda said, taking his cup of tea from his other hand and setting it on the table. She reached around him and pulled his other arm to her. "I'm thinking of my own bond with him. Even if I can't sense him through the connection you have with him, I can have another kind. I want him to be part of the ceremony for that reason."

A fanciful notion, and kind beyond measure. A feeling of gratitude, of cherishing her, welled up in his side. He tugged her into his lap and she squealed with mock dismay.

As if on cue, Sybok was suddenly in the doorway.

"I require a beverage," he said simply, his eyes going from Sarek to Amanda and back again.

"You have had your allotted number of evening beverages," Sarek said more sternly than he intended, his tone fueled by an odd sense of disappointment. Amanda slid softly off his lap and patted her hand on the sofa.

"Come here," she said, but Sybok didn't move. Instead, he kept his gaze on Sarek. Glancing up at Sarek, Amanda said, "For just a moment?"

And then, to Sybok she said, "It's always hard for me to fall asleep someplace new, too. You can sit with us for a few minutes, until you get sleepy."

"And then you will tuck me in?"

"Your father and I will both tuck you in."

And suddenly Sybok was running across the floor, his bare feet smacking the polished wood with a rhythmic patter. With a flying leap he landed beside Amanda, pressing into her side, his dark eyes flashing like someone celebrating a victory.

**X X X**

Captain Kirk stands in front of the door of the brig, arms akimbo, his feet apart, like someone bracing for a storm.

Which he might be, Sybok thinks. Since surrendering the Altoran ship, Sybok's been isolated here in the brig, uncertain how the others have taken the news about Vulcan. Or if the captain has told them.

Surely by now they all know. Raska'ot and Tri'eska—they do. _Did._ Part of their desperation was fueled by that knowledge. The others will be equally distraught. Maybe violent.

_Probably violent._

He searches the captain's face for a clue.

"The Altorans?" Sybok asks, and Kirk uncrosses his arms and says, "They took their ship and left. I don't know what other compensation they might demand. Since they aren't members of the Federation—"

He lets his sentence drift off and Sybok nods. Without an embassy, the lines of communication are hazy. The Altorans can, conceivably, hunt down the _V'tosh ka'tur_ and Rihannsu and attack them later wherever they settle. It is equally likely that Sybok will never hear from them again.

That thought gives him no pleasure. He thinks about the Altoran captain, Arnissakrea, and wonders if he is dead or merely wounded. Either way, Sybok feels an almost physical pain in his side when he imagines him.

"And us?" he says. The captain tips his head to the side, as if he is listening to some inner voice.

"We have orders to deliver you to the authorities on New Vulcan. I don't know what happens after that."

"Handing us over to the Vulcans," Sybok muses. "Not a happy prospect."

"Better than you deserve," Kirk says, scowling.

"Then you don't know the Vulcans very well."

Kirk takes a step closer to the door and the electric seal hums in response.

"They'll be more than fair with you," he says.

Sybok snorts.

"How fair is it to make outlaws of your own people, just because their world view doesn't square with tradition? These _fair_ Vulcans of yours, Captain Kirk, treated the _V'tosh ka'tur_ like criminals, made life on Vulcan so intolerable that we had no recourse but to leave. Desperate times call for desperate measures, Captain. Don't lecture me about the justice and mercy of Vulcans."

"You may find," Kirk says slowly, "that things are different now."

"They need us now, you mean. Because they face extinction otherwise."

"You all do."

Sybok shakes his head.

"Vulcans don't want to change," he says, his voice wistful, sad. "And people who can't change don't survive."

Suddenly he's very tired. Well-meaning, the captain is nevertheless wasting his time—and Sybok's. The only part of New Vulcan Sybok expects to see is whatever passes for a prison there.

"We'll arrive in less than twelve hours," Kirk says. "Then you can see for yourself what they want from you."

As Sybok watches the captain turn to leave, a swatch of blue catches his eye. Spock, rounding the corner.

"Mr. Spock, I didn't think you were on duty," the captain says, an odd tone in his voice. A rebuke? Surprise? Sybok isn't sure.

"I am on my way to the bridge," Spock says. "If you have no objections, I would like to speak to Sybok first."

An unreadable expression crosses the captain's face and he says, "No, sure. Go ahead. I'll see you in a little while."

After he leaves, Spock steps closer to the brig door and stands with one hand gripping his other wrist behind his back.

The two men eye each other silently, as if trying to decide who will speak first.

"We are headed to the colony on New Vulcan," Spock says abruptly.

"So your captain told me."

"Sarek will be there."

"So I surmised."

"The High Council," Spock says, "has been actively looking for survivors, including any _V'tosh ka'tur_ currently residing on other planets."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"They may offer you the option of settling on the colony."

"That seems unlikely. We are criminals, remember?"

Sybok paces the short width of the brig.

"You are also," Spock says, "members of an endangered species. That may affect the outcome of your hearing."

"What about the Rihannsu? Their species is responsible for what happened. How do you think that will affect _their_ hearing?"

A wash of dismay darkens Spock's expression. Sybok watches him struggle—and fail—to appear impassive.

"The Council knows that these Rihannsu are not the ones who…attacked…Vulcan."

"It doesn't matter," Sybok says, an image of Davara and Tri'eska making him flush. "They have allied themselves with the _V'tosh ka'tur._ That is enough to damn them."

Spock takes in an audible breath.

"It is not your past that will condemn you," he says, letting his arms swing to his side, taking a step closer as if he could reach out and strike Sybok. "It is what you choose to do now that shows your character."

"Is that what you came to tell me?"

He intends to sound dispassionate, but instead his words are provocative, pointed. Spock reacts immediately.

"What have you done to me?"

Not a question, but a command for information. Sybok looks up in confusion.

"I don't know what you mean."

"In the mind meld. You did something. I am unable to…reach…my bondmate. Even my connection to Sarek is altered. You have damaged my bond."

"I've done nothing to you," Sybok says, deliberately turning away. "Except force you to look at what you don't want to see."

"You forced yourself into my memories," Spock says with genuine heat. "You forced me to share them with you, to participate in them again against my will."

"I had to!" Sybok says loudly, turning back to face Spock. "I needed to know what you know—about Vulcan, about Amanda. Of course it caused you pain to see it again. It always will! You will never be able to see it the way Vulcans want to see it—without passion and feeling and misery. It will never be logical. _Never_! It will never make sense.

"I did not do anything to you. _You_ did it to you. You work so hard to keep those memories away that you have walled yourself up, hiding from your pain. No one can hide forever from pain, Spock. Not even you."

Spock stands mute, his face drained, stricken. Then without a word he pivots on his heel and leaves, the only sound the steady, persistent thrum of the _Enterprise's_ engines.

**A/N: Whether or not it was worth the wait, I hope you will let me know!**


	11. Double X

**Chapter 11: Double X**

**Disclaimer: Only the mischief is mine. Alas.**

**X**

"Promise me," Nyota says, "that you won't tell Chekov that I got us lost."

At her elbow, Davara gives her a quizzical look. The young Rihannsu knows who Chekov is. Nyota has seen them sitting together— _twice_ —in the _Enterprise_ mess hall. Perhaps the conjugation for _lost_ is confusing her? The dialect of Romulan Davara speaks is slightly different from the one Nyota knows.

She starts to ask but Davara's expression clears and she says, "Ah, the navigator. Because he is tasked with charting the ship's course. You are constructing a joke."

Nodding, Nyota glances down at her handheld scanner and wishes for the umpteenth time that she had an honest-to-goodness tricorder. Her personal scanner is far too small to have all the updated maps for New Vulcan. From the looks of things—the widespread construction, the traffic detours that shift hourly—the colony is growing and changing so fast that even a Mark III tricorder would have trouble keeping up.

She and Davara are standing on a makeshift walkway that runs parallel to a bustling road. Flitters, ground cars, and large, wheeled terrain movers rumble by. From her reaction, Davara is more enthralled than overwhelmed by all the noise and motion. Considering how isolated she's been from other people, other civilizations, that's a relief. Nyota wouldn't have been surprised if the young woman had asked to return to the _Enterprise_ by now.

More than half of the Rihannsu and _V'tosh ka'tur_ settlers have been transferred to temporary housing on the surface of the planet. The others are still aboard the ship until the High Council decides if—and where—their petition for a land grant will be approved. From what Sarek's told her, some of the Council members are willing to allow the _V'tosh ka'tur_ to return only if they agree to be assimilated as citizens in New Shi'Kahr—where, presumably, they will be under close scrutiny of the fledgling government's security forces.

Others are willing to allow their return if they establish a settlement distinct—and remote—from the capital.

"I'm not sure I'd agree to either of those conditions," Nyota had told Sarek. He raised one eyebrow in such an uncanny likeness of Spock that she struggled to stifle a smile.

"Nor I," he said. "Though I understand why the authorities propose them. The _V'tosh ka'tur_ are not trustworthy."

"They haven't been in the _past_ ," she murmured quietly, knowing that Sarek would understand the import behind her words.

_They haven't been in the past…but that doesn't mean they won't be in the future._

He looked at her closely.

"It is logical to assume that someone's past behavior is an indication of their usual behavior," he said with a hint of asperity. "And someone's usual behavior is a predictor of how they will continue to behave."

"Of course," she said, attempting to sound conciliatory, "but people can change. It would be… _illogical_ …to assume that things must stay the same."

Pointing out a rare slip in logic was a trump card she used at times in arguments with Spock—a gentle pinprick to his vaunted certainty about things. She'd never dared to suggest to Sarek that his own logic might be in error. Until now.

A shadow crossed his face. Fleeting, to be sure, but a definite flicker of annoyance.

As she watched, his face grew impassive again, either because he had sorted out his own internal musings or because he was able to mask his emotions more effectively than Spock ever did.

"That remains to be seen," Sarek said, the matter closed.

"If your father doesn't believe the _V'tosh ka'tur_ can change," Nyota said later to Spock, "then no one will. Sybok could be wasting his time appealing to the High Council otherwise."

Spock hadn't replied, but he hadn't needed to. She could see the skepticism and disapproval in his face.

Now here she is, caught up in an unwanted bit of Vulcan scheming.

Two days ago Nyota had been getting ready for her shift when T'Pau contacted her over the ship's comm.

"I was told that you were injured recently," T'Pau said without preamble.

"Lady T'Pau," Nyota said, flustered that Spock's clan matriarch was calling. "Thank you for your concern. Spock is not here at the moment, but I can—"

"It is you I wish to speak to," T'Pau said, cutting her off. "Your injury? Is it healed?"

"Y-yes," Nyota stammered. "It was minor. I'm fine now."

"I require your assistance," she said, "in facilitating a family meeting."

Nyota's task, T'Pau told her, was to get Davara and her mother to T'Pol's apartment in the city. T'Pau herself would arrange to get Sybok and Sarek there.

"No matter what the High Council decides," T'Pau said, "Sarek needs to reconnect with Sybok. Their estrangement must end."

"I'm not sure they've even spoken," Nyota added, and T'Pau's dark eyes glittered.

"That is why it may be best," the older woman said, "if the opportunity simply _arises_."

"Ambush them, you mean. Not tell them."

"The element of surprise," T'Pau said.

Nyota had started to protest that Spock would know—and through him, Sarek would sense that something was being planned.

But would he, really? Since they've been in orbit over the colony, Spock has consulted two healers about the difficulty he and Nyota are having with their bond. The first healer had been frankly mystified—and dismissive, once she knew that Spock's bondmate was human—but the second agreed to try to help. For each of the past four days, Spock has spent part of his off-duty time on the surface practicing advanced meditation techniques the healer agreed to teach him.

As it turned out, getting Davara and Tri'eska to Shi'Kahr had been easy. Tri'eska wanted to take a flitter to the outskirts to get soil samples and make a vegetation survey—necessary first steps for anyone considering the location for a farm community.

Davara, on the other hand, was eager to see the city itself. Nyota gave Tri'eska the address where they were to meet later, and she and Davara made their way through the clothing and food stores along the street opposite the municipal government buildings.

Before long, the afternoon slipped away and Nyota headed east—or what she thought was east. Within minutes she was completely turned around.

And insisting that Davara not tell Chekov that she has gotten them lost.

They aren't the only people on the walkway, but they are clearly gathering the most attention. Nyota glances up from her scanner as yet another young Vulcan male slows visibly and comes as close to staring as possible without actually doing it.

 _Davara, of course._ The Rihannsu woman is striking, her dark eyes the same color as her hair which she wears pulled back in a low ponytail. To an untrained eye she looks no different from any of the Vulcan women walking past—lithe and athletic, with characteristic upswept brows and pointed ears.

The Vulcans, however, are not fooled. Something in Davara's carriage—the way she holds herself; how her posture is both self-assured and tentative—gives her away.

And more than that. She is a contradiction of strength and vulnerability—with a defensive glint in her eye, a brusqueness in her step—that catches everyone's attention.

No, not everyone. Every young male.

Not that their glances are rude or even intrusive. But they are more than simply curious. Eager, even. Like cats with their ears pricked forward.

"Turn here," Nyota says, motioning to a side street that looks vaguely familiar.

The walkway is less crowded here, a relief in more ways than one.

Apparently Davara has noticed the attention as well. Stepping closer to Nyota as they walk, she says, "Are Vulcan men always so expressive?"

Nyota laughs.

"Not the ones I know," she says when she can catch her breath. "Why do you ask?"

Davara looks around as if to make sure no one overhears her before she answers.

"I was told they feel no emotions," she says, leaning close, "or if they do, they do not show them."

"Oh, they have emotions," Nyota says quickly. "But they do generally keep a lid on them."

Seeing Davara's confusion, she adds, "Keep them private. You know, keep their feelings to themselves."

She looks up and sees that the road dead-ends into a cul de sac. With a sigh, Nyota motions for Davara to turn around and head back up the street.

"This was obviously wrong," she says. "We're going to have to stop and ask someone for directions."

Although she had told T'Pau that her injury was completely healed, her ankle begins to ache—the dry heat, the incline of the road, the pervasive dust scattered by the terrain movers not improving her mood.

"You are Commander Spock's bondmate," Davara says as she comes abreast once more, and Nyota nods.

"Why do you ask?"

"You are human."

"You noticed."

"I meant no offense," the young woman says hastily. "The humans on your ship are like the Rihannsu, with your emotions on view. I am surprised that you would choose a Vulcan bondmate. I have grown up believing that most Vulcans felt nothing, and yet, the ones I see here—"

She pauses, and Nyota supplies, "Are different from what you were taught?"

"Yes," Davara says. "Commander Spock, for instance, is very intense. Very…angry. And sad."

Slowing and looking Nyota full in the face, Davara says, "Forgive me if I shouldn't have spoken—"

"No, no," Nyota says. "He…he _is_ angry. And sad. About what happened to his world. I think most Vulcans are. But they're dealing with it the best way they know how."

"I can see," Davara says, "how the people here are not so different from the _V'tosh ka'tur_ that I know, despite what I was told. Not so different from the Rihannsu."

A ground car slides by too close for comfort and Nyota holds out her hand to shepherd Davara back onto the walkway.

"You could make a life here," Nyota says. "As you say, your people are not so different."

"Perhaps," Davara says.

They pause for a moment at an intersection and Nyota looks around for any familiar landmark. Nothing. The road doesn't even appear on her handheld scanner.

"Let's ask in there," Nyota says, pointing across the busy thoroughfare to what appears to be a retailer of some sort. Davara nods and without looking back, starts to dart into the traffic.

"Wait!" Nyota says, but before she can run after her, she sees someone rushing ahead.

A young man, his hair so black that it looks blue in the sunlight, grasps Davara by the arm and pulls her back onto the walkway.

"I apologize," he says in formal Vulcan, "but your safety was a concern."

Davara seems dazed—though whether from her near accident or from the attentions of the young man, Nyota isn't sure. She clears her throat.

At once he shifts his attention to her and puts his hands politely behind his back.

"You might be able to help us," she says, showing him her scanner with the address for T'Pol's apartment displayed at the top. "Can you tell us how to get to this location?"

Because she is watching closely, Nyota sees the young man's expression brighten instantly and then even out into something less obvious. _Happiness, and an effort to hide it._

"I can do better than that," he says, his tone betraying his enthusiasm. "I can take you there."

Nyota raises her eyebrows in a question. Davara meets her eyes and dips her head.

_It's agreed._

"That would be most appreciated," Nyota says. "You two walk ahead and I'll follow. The walkway is far too narrow for all three of us."

**X X**

The first loss was hard enough. The second was almost unbearable.

Sarek stood at the end of the hospital corridor consciously slowing his breathing, his heartbeat. It would not do to let Amanda see his distress, at least not here. Later, at home when they were alone, he would grieve openly.

Now he was all business and efficiency, making sure that the medics attended to her pain in a timely manner, that she was allowed to rest sufficiently. Having a quiet word if a new healer appeared, giving what Amanda would have called a _heads up_ about her human emotional expressiveness. Better for everyone concerned that no one entered her room unprepared for the sight of her distress—her eyes swollen into slits, her nose raw and red.

One of the specialists saw him hesitating at the end of the corridor and approached him, flimplast in hand.

"The postmortem," the specialist said, indicating the flimplast. "As I suspected. Simple failure to thrive."

The result was not surprising—was, in fact, what Sarek expected. Idiopathic mortality, the report would say. Meaning that the medics didn't really know why the baby died.

Sarek took the flimplast and nodded mutely. Later he might read it. Or he might not. The odds were high that it was similar to the other report, the one detailing the prenatal death of their first child, also midway through term, also with no identified cause.

"The researchers in Gol have had recent success in unusual recombinant cases. You might want to contact them."

Medical intervention—something Amanda had resisted, as if a child conceived with help was somehow a failure on her part. A human notion, or Amanda's personal quirk—he wasn't sure. Either way, he had been willing to try to conceive a child naturally first.

"I shall consider it," Sarek said to the specialist before heading down the hall toward Amanda's room.

She was awake, and for the first time in two days, not crying, though through their bond he felt that the weight of her grief hadn't lessened at all.

 _I'm trying to get home,_ Amanda said wordlessly, and he understood that her dry eyes and stoic countenance were a performance only, a ruse to convince the healers to release her. He stepped to the door and scanned the hallway for someone with the authority to sign her out.

They rode in silence from the hospital to their home, the only noise the mechanical whir of the flitter. Amanda kept her eyes closed for most of the trip, and once, when he glanced over at her, Sarek felt his heart give a worried skip. Perhaps she should have stayed in the hospital another day.

 _But no._ Her relief when they got home was palpable, and though she tottered slightly when she made her way slowly to their bedroom, he was glad to have her there.

For the next several days he didn't go into the city to work. He was quick to attend to her hunger and pain. While she slept, he stretched out beside her on their bed and kept a watchful vigil.

When the weeping came—as he had known it would—he hid his uneasiness and sat holding her in his arms, mostly silent, but sometimes murmuring reassurances, aware that neither did much to alleviate her sorrow. At those times he felt most Vulcan, most alien, most inadequate for her needs.

One morning she surprised him by telling to go on to the office, that she was stronger today, and after seeing her preparing tea and flatbread for herself in the kitchen, he agreed.

"You're getting underfoot," she said, waving her hand in his direction like someone shooing a Terran fly.

At lunchtime he felt an urgent need to come home and found her curled in the bed, keening and inconsolable.

"I'm so sorry," she finally managed to say, hiccupping and wiping her face with her palm, and he knew that she was not simply apologizing for interrupting his work or causing him distress, but for failing him in some elemental way.

He took off more time from work, knowing that his colleagues were baffled that he did and not caring that they were.

A week later a border skirmish broke out on Denari-Elisis and Amanda insisted that he go—insisted that she was looking forward to _peace and quiet_ for a change—an old joke between them.

"Your sister could come stay with you while I'm away," he said, packing his bag the night before the delegation was scheduled to leave. He toyed with the idea of contacting Cecilia on his own and arranging a flight for her.

"Can't," Amanda said. "I'll be too busy when Sybok gets here."

"I got in touch with T'Ria yesterday and canceled his visit."

He happened to glance up then and was astonished that Amanda's mouth had fallen open, that tears were springing to her eyes.

"How could you!"

"It seemed logical to wait until you were feeling stronger," he hurried to say.

But Amanda was past hearing him. She alternated between loud sobs and furious profanity—or at least Sarek assumed that's what the unknown words were.

"You had no right!" she wailed. "We don't get to see him enough as it is! He looks forward to these visits, and now he'll think I don't want him here!"

Sarek was completely dumbfounded. Amanda's reaction was not just unexpected, it was illogical. Her physical health was subpar. Her stamina was lacking. Occasionally she was so distracted that Sarek had to remind her what she had been doing.

Surely taking care of a 9-year-old boy was more than she could manage.

"You get in touch with T'Ria before you leave," she said, punctuating the point with a raised index finger, "and tell her you were mistaken. You tell her that she's to put Sybok on the transport as we planned and that I will pick him up at the station."

Not bothering to argue with her, Sarek made the call.

The next day when he hefted his travel bag and prepared to leave, Amanda put one hand on his cheek and said, "I'm sorry about last night. But you don't understand. I need him. Especially now."

The entire trip to Denari-Elisis, Sarek kept his awareness turned toward home, sending Amanda all the comfort he could. He knew when Sybok arrived because he felt Amanda's mood lift immediately—not that her sadness disappeared, but the happiness she felt with Sybok shifted her sadness from the center of her focus to somewhere at the edge of her conscious mind.

For a week he was consumed with the intricacies of Denarian politics and the very real threat of war.

But underneath, his attention never wavered from his family.

When the immediate crisis finally passed and the warring parties agreed to serious mediation, the Vulcan embassy sent a second delegation for a long-term assignment and Sarek returned home.

Although he had left his personal flitter at the transport station, he half hoped that Amanda and Sybok would be waiting for him there. Foolish to wish for something so illogical, he thought, making his way from the shuttle to the parking deck where his flitter was locked.

 _A measure of how much I miss them,_ he thought as he drove through the streets of the city.

The same fantasy—or a version of it—reared up again as he drew close to home. He could imagine the two of them waiting outside for him—Amanda standing pale and smiling, her hand lifted in affection, Sybok at her side, his head tucked down respectfully, his hands at his side.

The image was so clear that when he drove up and saw them standing on the front porch waiting for him, he felt a surge of pleasure, as if his faith in his vision had been vindicated.

Except, the vision wasn't exactly as he had imagined it. There was Amanda, looking too thin despite the thick Vulcan robe she wore, her face alight with more joy than he'd seen in some time, her hand waving large arcs at him, her balance oddly off-kilter. And Sybok at her side, his expression somber, almost wary, as Sarek unlatched the flitter door and stepped out.

But as he took a step closer, Sarek saw the reason Amanda was tipped to the side. Sybok was holding her free hand with both of his, as if he was afraid that she might dart away.

Rather than looking annoyed at her captor, Amanda glanced down at him with undisguised affection.

"Welcome back!" Amanda said, laughing.

"Hello, Father," Sybok said, looking at Sarek shyly. "Mother and I are pleased that you are here."

Only later—and only when Amanda prodded him—did Sarek realize that this was the first time Sybok had ever referred to Amanda as _Mother_.

"Don't you see why that matters?" she said that night as they lay entwined together in their bed, Sybok sleeping soundly in the room they kept set up for him down the hall. "If we never have another child, I can bear it now."

In fact, Sarek didn't quite see—not the way Amanda wanted him to. What did it matter what Sybok called her? What were words, really, except tongue and teeth arranged around a puff of air?

Real words were soundless, were felt rather than spoken, were too large and ponderous for mere sound but rumbled through the bond he felt with Amanda both when he was awake and in his sleep, when they were touching and when they were apart.

And rumbled through the bond he felt with his son—a bond he had not felt so strongly until now, as if the leash of blood and electricity he shared with Amanda yoked him to Sybok as well, which, he realized with a start, it surely must.

**X X X**

T'Pol slips her fingers around the curved handle of the cast iron teapot, a replica of ancient Terran teapots of Japanese design. As she always does when she uses it, she admires the sleek lines, the subtle decorative deltas carved on the surface like the Starfleet logo turned on its side.

"That's why I picked it out," Trip told her all those years ago. A gift on her 67th birthday. Or had it been her 68th? Lately she has trouble keeping details like that straight. Normal aging. Inevitable. But annoying, nevertheless.

Trip would have remembered. Something would have helped him—his engineer's training, perhaps, or the pleasure he got from teasing her about her age. His love of details. His love for her.

It has taken her many years to be able to think of Trip without pain. Even so, she rarely uses the teapot but keeps it boxed up with her other mementos of him.

Today she makes an exception.

As she prepares the tea, she watches the young Vulcan sitting across from her in the small sitting room in her apartment on New Vulcan. Like the rest of her living quarters, the sitting room is sparsely furnished—her choice. She and her guest sit on the two parallel wooden benches facing each other. Separating the benches is a low, narrow table. On one end is a cluster of lit candles. On the other are the teapot and two empty cups.

As the tea steeps, the scent changes slowly from acrid to mellow. When a faint hint of something floral wafts up, she says, "It is ready," and lifting the pot, she pours the tea.

"Welcome to my home, S'chn T'gai Sybok," she says, taking the first ritual sip. She watches as he picks up his cup.

"I am honored, Lady T'Pol," he says. "But I am not a S'chn T'gai. When I require a clan designation, I use my wife's."

T'Pol is too old and steady to show her surprise. Instead, she takes another sip and curls her fingers around her cup, warming them.

"I see," she says. "And your father? Does he know your feelings about his clan name?"

"My father," Sybok says slowly, looking over the top of his cup as he holds it in front of him, "does not believe that I should have feelings about anything."

_This may be more difficult than she anticipated._

T'Pol feels as flicker of annoyance at T'Pau for asking for her help.

"You are uniquely positioned to understand the situation," T'Pau had said when she asked her to meet with Sybok as a representative of the Elders. "I will speak to him when he is called before the High Council," T'Pau explained. "If you speak to him first, he might be more receptive to what we have to offer."

T'Pol had protested otherwise but T'Pau wasn't easily dissuaded, still as stubborn as when they met more than a century ago.

"You sound angry," T'Pol says to Sybok, setting her cup on the table.

Without looking up, she can tell that she has offended him. A slight rustle of his robe, his boot scraping across the flagstone, an intake of air. Sarek is right to be concerned.

"Please forgive me for my loss of control."

He says it simply, his voice almost flat.

But he means it. When T'Pol looks up, she notes the earnestness in his expression. This is a young man who wants to be taken seriously, who is savvy enough to dial back his irritation when it suits him. Someone who could be a born leader, or a dangerous influence.

"You need not apologize to me," she says. "I understand loss of control better than you know."

She watches a flicker of curiosity in Sybok's eyes. Stifling a sigh, she adjusts her robes. Suddenly she's almost overwhelmed with weariness.

Another symptom of aging, or perhaps one of the many artifacts of her experimentation with trellium-D? Difficult to know.

"Lady TPol," Sybok says, leaning forward, "why am I here?"

"Your clan matriarch," T'Pol says, and then pausing briefly, continues, "or if you prefer, your _father's_ clan matriarch, asked me to speak to you before you meet with the High Council. To answer your questions. To offer any advice I might have."

Picking up her tea cup, she adds, "Not that you are obliged to take it."

"Your advice would be welcome."

"Would it? I assume you are used to charting your own path."

Sybok gives the ghost of a smile.

"Every path is easier with guidance from those who have traveled it before."

"Your apparent devotion to Vulcan tradition is admirable," T'Pol says. She gives Sybok a hard glare to make sure he understands that she is being ironic. He does. He laughs out loud.

"Nevertheless," Sybok says, " _your_ advice would be helpful."

T'Pol picks up the teapot and refills Sybok's cup before she settles back onto the bench.

"You should take the offer the High Council is prepared to make," she says. "Abandon what you started as _V'tosh ka'tur_. Learn what others before you have discovered, that logic is more useful than emotion, particularly now, when all of Vulcan is at risk of extinction. We were on the brink before, in Surak's time, and logic saved us."

She expects Sybok to argue with her and she waits. Instead, he sits quietly on the bench opposite, his tea cup cradled in one palm.

"The High Council is willing to overlook your recent transgressions," T'Pol says, "if you are willing to offer recompense. Service to the colony would be a start. There are many possibilities for meaningful work here."

"As long as we agree to follow Vulcan traditions," Sybok says suddenly.

"Every society has rules," T'Pol says, refusing to be baited.

"But Vulcan society requires we be something other than we are," Sybok says, his voice rising.

"You imagine," T'Pol says slowly, "that by embracing emotions, you are somehow different from anyone else."

"And so we are."

"You know better than that. Your father may not discuss his feelings with you, but that doesn't mean he doesn't find value in them."

"How can he find value in something he doesn't acknowledge?"

"Acknowledge to you, perhaps. If he maintains his privacy, how does it harm you? You, on the other hand, insist on imposing your emotions on others. That is what Vulcans find objectionable."

"Keep silent about what we feel. That is what you recommend?"

He says it as a challenge, as if what he is saying is ridiculous. T'Pol nods.

"That is exactly what I am recommending. And don't be so quick to dismiss the role of logic in your lives. It can be a great help."

She can see that she is losing him. He sets his cup on the table and puts his hands on his knees, like someone getting ready to leave.

"Sybok," she says to call him back, "you said you would listen to what I have to advise. Listen closely now. More than the other elders—more than anyone on the High Council—I understand why the _V'tosh ka'tur_ have sought out emotion. I, too, have done the same."

She has his attention now.

"My time with humans," she says, "on the _Enterprise_. It was…instructive. And frustrating. At first I found their easy access to emotions tiresome. Difficult to endure. But in time I adjusted."

He's watching her closely, quietly, and in one of those moments that have defined her life, she makes a decision to share more than is comfortable.

"At one point I took actions to make my own emotions easier to feel, to express."

She looks down at the teapot—imagines Trip placing it in her hands.

"I know Vulcans don't celebrate birthdays," he had said. "But you're not just any Vulcan."

At the time she hadn't questioned his meaning. He was contrasting her to the other Vulcans he knew— _"prickly bastards,"_ Trip called them—Ambassador Soval and the ruling elders of the High Command.

But in time she knew that Trip was saying something else, too—not just about her, but about _them._

_You aren't just any Vulcan. You are mine._

"What did—" Sybok begins, but she waves her hand and he falls silent.

"I ingested small amounts of trellium-D," she says. The admission still brings heat to her face. "I took illegal and dangerous drugs that allowed me to act out those feelings that I had been taught to repress. It was…liberating."

Sybok's eyes widen, and she hastens to add, "And I almost destroyed myself in the process. As you will destroy yourself, if you don't temper your passions with logic."

Sitting up, he says, "Even if I agreed with you, I do not speak for the others."

"And yet," T'Pol says, "they followed you here."

"If they listened to me once, they do not anymore."

"You are mistaken. They told the High Council that you are their leader."

She sees at once that she has surprised him.

He opens his mouth to respond but the door chime stops him.

"Enter," T'Pol calls out, and the exterior door swings open.

"I was told to come for Sybok. The Council is ready."

Sarek, looking like an older version of his son. Until now T'Pol had not marked their similarities.

Standing up slowly, she motions for him to enter the room.

"The Council will wait while you sit with your son for a cup of tea," she says. She glances from Sarek to Sybok and sees something pass between them, like an electric spark jumping across a gap. Earlier Sarek had told her that Sybok had severed their connection years ago, had tamped down their bond so completely that he no longer felt his presence anymore. Could he have been in error?

"Another time, perhaps," Sarek says.

"It wasn't a request," she says. "T'Pau insists. And besides," she says, as the door chimes again, "here are some people you need to meet."

And then to Sybok she says, "Your reinforcements have arrived. It's time to be a leader in more ways than one."

**A/N: The women are the real movers and shakers in this chapter…hence the title, a teasing reference to female chromosomes.**


	12. The Truth Will Set You Free

**Chapter 12: The Truth Will Set You Free**

**Disclaimer: Come play! No one's working for money here!**

T'Pol brushes her hand across the access panel and the exterior door slides open.

Spock's bondmate, the young human woman, stands on the threshold.

"Lieutenant," T'Pol says by way of greeting. "Please come in."

The lieutenant looks over her shoulder to the two Rihannsu standing behind her. The older of the two is a woman whose features suggest hard living in an unfriendly climate, her stance defensive, her gaze almost hyper alert. The younger woman—a girl, really—has softer features, though she is clearly the older woman's daughter.

_Sybok's family._ T'Pol follows the lieutenant's gaze and motions with her hand.

"Sybok is here already," she says. And then, as an afterthought, "And his father."

The lieutenant moves to the side and says, "I'll be going now," but something catches her attention and she stops.

Sarek, stepping forward.

"If you have the time," he says, "your presence would be…helpful."

Few things surprise T'Pol anymore at her age. Nevertheless, she struggles to keep her expression neutral. Sarek asking for emotional support from his daughter-in-law? A testament to the strength of his connection to her—and a commentary about how adrift he must feel these days without his human wife.

A feeling T'Pol understands all too well—the sorrow and emptiness never completely going away after such a loss.

She takes a breath and turns, expecting the others to follow her—which, of course, they do. One of the prerogatives of old age, to be obeyed without so much tedious discussion.

From the bench where he has been sitting, Sybok stands and the Rihannsu women move beside him. After hesitating a moment, the lieutenant steps lightly across the room to where Sarek waits.

"Please," T'Pol says, lowering herself gently on one of the carved wooden benches. The others follow suit.

The silence in the room is so complete that T'Pol can hear the mechanical whirr of the old-fashioned chronometer on the dresser beside her bed in the sleeping chamber down the hall. _Trip's clock, the only memento she keeps on regular display._

"Your clanswoman," T'Pol says, breaking the silence, "has asked that you converse before the High Council meets. After such a long estrangement, it seems an appropriate thing to do."

No one speaks. The lieutenant, however, looks distinctly uncomfortable.

Echoing Sarek's mood? Or the lieutenant's own distress? What was it T'Pau had said, that Spock and his bondmate are suffering from some sort of bonding difficulties? That the lieutenant was asked to escort Sybok's family here because Spock wouldn't sense what she was doing?

"Sarek needs to deal with his firstborn first," T'Pau had told T'Pol. "Without Spock."

Until now it hadn't occurred to T'Pol that Spock's and his bondmate's problems would be known by the entire family. She pauses and ponders that notion—and feels a mixture of relief and loneliness that her own family connections are so small and tenuous—a few distant cousins are all that remain of her clan, their presence only dimly felt, and only after much concentrated attention.

Useless to feel regret about what cannot be changed. T'Pol turns her attention to the issue at hand.

"Sarek?"

As if calling himself back from someplace distant, Sarek faces Sybok and says, "All indications are that the High Council will extend an invitation for you to settle here on New Vulcan, if that is what you desire."

A dry recitation, and not what T'Pol had hoped might be the first overture to a family reconciliation. _Sarek, of all people, presenting himself like the quintessential impassive Vulcan. Sarek, who chose a human wife, whose sons have each diverged from Vulcan tradition._ She stifles her irritation.

Sybok, however, apparently hears more in his father's words. He flushes visibly.

"Invited to settle here on _their_ terms," Sybok says, his anger instant and undisguised. T'Pol sits back to watch the expected fireworks. She isn't disappointed.

"The same terms everyone here accepts," Sarek says, his swift response an indication of his annoyance. "Follow the law, submit to the authority of the Council, make yourself useful and productive, help build this world."

"Put aside what we value as _V'tosh ka'tur_. Deny what makes us who we are."

"You are Vulcans, first and foremost," Sarek says, his voice rising. "Even you should be able to see the necessity of setting aside your personal needs for the greater good at this time."

The lieutenant leans toward Sarek a fraction, as if she is shoring him up in some way.

Perhaps she is, T'Pol thinks.

Sybok, too, seems aware of his father's struggle to maintain control. He takes a deep breath and says, "And the Romulans? What about them? Is the High Council prepared to welcome them?"

"If they agree to follow Vulcan law."

"And Vulcan philosophy?"

Sybok's words are almost sarcastic. _What is that human phrase? Throwing down a gauntlet?_ Yes, T'Pol thinks, that's exactly what Sybok is doing—daring his father to refute him.

"Sybok," Sarek says, no longer bothering to hide his irritation, "our survival is in doubt. Vulcan philosophy has served us well in the past. There is no reason to discount its benefits now."

Suddenly T'Pol feels a wave of weariness. Looking longingly at the cooling pot of tea on the table between the two benches, she says, "You may debate the merits of Vulcan ideology another time. Right now you have other truths to share."

For a moment no one moves. Then the lieutenant gives a start and says, "Oh! If you would prefer privacy—"

As she had the first time she met the lieutenant months ago on the _Enterprise_ , T'Pol notes her intelligence, her quickness of mind. Not many humans would have understood that a mind meld is the only way Sarek and Sybok can communicate without their past rancor getting in the way. Spock chose his bondmate well.

_As did Sybok._ The woman sitting beside him angles her body forward, her message unmistakable: _She isn't going anywhere._

"Well, Sarek?" T'Pol folds her hands on her lap.

Sarek looks around the room and then rises slowly, moving around the long table until he is standing in front of Sybok.

Wordlessly, Sybok glances from his bondmate to the young Rihannsu woman. Some signal passes between the three of them, and then Sybok gets to his feet.

"Very well," he says, lifting his hand toward his father's face. "Though it may be more than you want to know."

X

The bruise was small, new, almost hidden between the curve of Spock's ear and his hairline. If Spock hadn't been leaning forward over his bowl of _plomeek_ soup—if Sybok hadn't passed behind him on his way to a place at the kitchen table— it would have gone unnoticed.

Sybok snaked his hand out and gingerly touched the bruise. Spock jumped as if burned.

"What's this?"

From across the kitchen where she was filling a tea kettle at the sink, Amanda looked around at Sybok's comment. Her motion caught the attention of Spock, who glanced up at her before turning to his brother.

"I fell," he said, his eyes imploring Sybok not to ask anything more. _So._ The bullying hadn't stopped after all. Despite having proven himself the month before by passing his _kahs-wan_ , Spock was obviously still a target of the children at school. Sybok pursed his lips and took a breath before slipping into his seat.

Gently he sent out a tendril of concern toward Spock, only to have it rebuffed.

_I am fine._

"You fell?" Amanda said, setting the tea kettle on the hob and stepping closer. Her worry thrummed through the family bond. "When did that happen?"

"At the _suus mahna_ session this morning." Spock spoke so quickly that Sybok sensed a lie. No, not a direct lie. A misdirection. He may have fallen, but the bruise didn't happen then.

"Let me see," Amanda said, but Spock ducked his head.

"Mother," he protested, and Amanda sighed and stepped back.

"You know," Sybok said, dipping his spoon into his bowl of soup, "you promised to show me the route you took through the mountain pass on your _kahs-wan_ the next time we went camping. Perhaps we should go soon, before the winter storms."

From across the table Spock met his eyes.

_Thank you_ , he said wordlessly, though Sybok wasn't sure if he meant _thank you_ for not tipping Amanda off to the significance of the bruise or _thank you_ for the promise of time together on a camping trip. Both, probably. He flashed a grin back and Spock looked away, clearly uncomfortable with Sybok's open display of emotion.

Sybok laughed out loud.

"What's so funny?" Amanda said, lifting the kettle from the hob and pouring tea into the empty cup beside his plate.

"I was just thinking," Sybok said, "about the last time Spock and I went camping. It was quite pleasant, wasn't it, little brother?"

Spock lowered his spoon to his bowl slowly and seemed to consider how to answer his brother's obvious teasing.

"It was agreeable," he said at last.

"Well," Amanda said, sitting down at her own place, "I'm not sure a camping trip's a good idea." She paused, as if she were listening to an inner debate.

_Spock needs this_ , Sybok told her wordlessly.

"But if you really want to go—" she said.

Sybok felt a thrill of accomplishment at changing Amanda's mind. Only last week she had said that now that the _kahs-wan_ was over, she intended to keep Spock safe at home.

Not that Sybok faulted Amanda for trying to keep Spock safe, especially from the continuing harassment at school. When her calls and visits with Spock's teachers produced no results, Sarek stepped in and threatened legal sanctions against the school unless they guaranteed his safety—which they hastily agreed to do.

But Sybok wasn't fooled. The bullying went underground and became anonymous. Once when he was walking home with Spock, a rock whistled overhead and barely missed them. Another time, Sybok pulled Spock's scuffed, torn PADDs from his backpack and held them up for inspection.

"It isn't like you to treat your possessions with such disregard," he said. Spock averted his eyes and did not answer.

Sybok set the PADDs down and said, "I know what is going on. You didn't do this. You need to inform Father."

_No!_

Spock's alarm leapt across their bond.

"It is…worse…when Mother and Father say anything."

Against his better judgment, Sybok had kept his silence, though he tried to be more vigilant, a task made harder once he graduated from the prep school and spent most of his days in the library at Shi'Kahr studying for his entrance exams.

That night after Spock went to bed, Sybok broached the idea of the camping trip while his father was working in his study. Sarek's swift refusal caught him off guard.

"His mother would be anxious," Sarek said. "And you have other things to attend to right now."

"What do you mean?"

"This came for you today," Sarek said, pointing to a folded parchment square lying on the corner of the desk. Picking it up, Sybok saw the embossed seal of the Vulcan Science Academy.

"Have you read it?" he asked, but Sarek shook his head.

"It is addressed to you," he said, "though I can surmise the contents."

Hefting the parchment in his palm, Sybok felt his heart sink. The parchment was so light that it weighed almost nothing. _A rejection letter_. He'd obviously failed the interview.

Well, there was no avoiding the confirmation. With a sudden jerk, he pulled the tab open and removed the letter.

It was short and to the point. Not an outright rejection, but it might as well have been. The admissions committee was offering him a chance to appeal and apply for another interview in the future. He held the letter out for his father to read.

"This comes from being untrustworthy," Sarek said, looking up. "The committee must have asked your peers about your activities."

It was a veiled reference to his association with the _V'tosh ka'tur_. Sybok was mortified—and furious. In truth he knew only two young students who claimed to be _V'tosh ka'tur_ , and neither was open about it. Sybok's interest was fueled in part by the clandestine nature of their beliefs, but the more he listened to how liberated they felt to be able to express emotions, the more Sybok started quietly seeking out experiences where he could explore the colors and excitement of his own emotional life.

"You find me untrustworthy because I dare to challenge tradition," he said, not wanting to implicate the _V'tosh ka'tur_ directly.

"Exactly. Tradition is a guide—"

"It is a restraint—"

"Just so. A restraint that serves us well. Unfettered emotion almost cost us our survival. Without logic and tradition, we would devolve into violence once again."

From the set of Sarek's jaw, Sybok could tell that arguing further would lead nowhere. Struggling to slow his racing heart, he put his hands behind his back and took a breath.

"It is of violence that I wish to speak."

Sarek looked at him sharply.

"Spock," Sybok said simply, letting the image of the bruise behind Spock's ear flash across his bond to his father.

Anger and guilt looped back through their bond.

"He hides it from me," Sarek said with undisguised despair.

"Sometimes," Sybok said slowly, "he will talk to me about it—when we are alone."

He felt Sarek wavering. For several heartbeats he locked eyes with his father—and then Sarek nodded.

The next morning when Sybok woke Spock and told him to get ready, he could feel his brother's excitement, even though Spock pretended nonchalance and kept his expression neutral. As they wrapped dried _fori_ and stuffed whole _kasa_ in their backpacks, Sybok said slyly, "I am glad we will have some time together to talk. I know how…school…has been for you."

He felt Spock's instant alarm and his scramble to hide it. Getting past his natural reserve would be a challenge.

The first part of the trip was relatively easy—through a gently sloping piedmont of sand dunes and low rocky hills. Soon enough the landscape took a sharp turn, becoming much steeper and more dangerous, with some of the pathways less than a meter wide. As he headed up the first switchback, Sybok kept an eye on Spock behind him, waving him away from the edge of the cliff and the unsteady scree that caused him to slip more than once.

By the time they stopped to unroll their sleeping mats for the night, Sybok was too tired to press Spock about anything private. Spock, on the other hand, was the one who spoke first—though not about himself.

"Mother says you may interview again at the Vulcan Science Academy," Spock said, his voice echoing across the flat mesa where they had set up camp. Sybok blinked in surprise. He'd only learned about the VSA rejection last night. When had Amanda had time to speak to Spock? For an uncomfortable moment, he felt a wave of jealousy at the communication Spock and Amanda shared—like a steady hum through their bond.

Of course, when he quieted himself—like now, here under the stars—he could feel her presence, too. Reassured, he started to reply, but Spock beat him to it.

"Are you nervous?"

By Vulcan standards the question was rude, inappropriate, even illogical. That Spock had asked it—Spock, who worked so hard to maintain a Vulcan demeanor, who rarely talked about emotions at all—was incongruous. Sybok laughed out loud, the noise startling some night creature that skittered away in the rocks.

Of course he was nervous. Who wouldn't be? But very few Vulcans would have admitted it. Sybok laughed again.

"Yes!" Sybok shouted. And then he added, "And no!"

"I do not understand—"

"I feel both things, little brother! I want to do well, to study at the Academy—"

And then Sybok lay back, his arms crossed behind his head, looking up at the darkening sky.

"But the universe is very large," he said, "and there are many things to do if I do not get accepted."

He heard Spock tugging the thermal blanket around his shoulders.

"What would you do? If you are not accepted? Where would you go?"

_The very question that consumed him these days._ Was it worth continuing to apply for admission to the VSA, or was the offer of another interview a mere formality before the committee turned him down?

If he attended the Vulcan Science Academy, his future was set—studying advanced mathematics or astrophysics, perhaps a career in the Science Institute.

But lately the idea of a life spent in the pure sciences was—if not exactly troubling—then at least unsatisfying. His interests were broader than his father's, than his brother's. History had a particular appeal, and literature—even poetry and art—something that seemed to baffle his father as much as it pleased Amanda. If he chose a life pursuing those things that excited his passions, where would that lead him?

_Where, indeed, would he go?_ He considered Spock's question.

"Out there," he said, lifting his arm to the stars. "To see what is there."

The sky overhead was deep violet, the stars spangled across it like decorations on the inside of an overturned bowl. For one dizzying minute Sybok stared up, shivering in the cold, and then he curled on his side and prepared to sleep. Already he could hear Spock's breathing becoming slow and rhythmic. Closing his eyes, he listened for a few minutes to the noises of the night—the distant call of a _va'khen_ catching an updraft on its wing, the wind rustling the tiny leaves of bushes growing along the verge of the plateau. He let himself relax.

The dream began almost immediately—as vivid as most of Sybok's dreams were. Glancing around, he noted that he was in the garden at T'Kea's home, the citrus trees in fragrant bloom. Curving along one edge of the yard was a flagstone path that the gardener was kneeling over, edging it with a short blade. A memory, then, and not just a dream—from last summer. He looked around knowing that T'Kea would be seated on the stone bench by the pond.

There she was as he remembered, her head bent over an old-fashioned paper book—a beautifully illustrated catalogue of Terran invertebrates that Amanda had brought back from her last trip to Seattle. On this day—the day in his dream—Sybok had presented it to T'Kea as a gift as Amanda had intended.

Because Sarek had often disagreed with Sybok's grandmother about his upbringing, Sybok was not yet bonded—not unheard of for a young man his age, but rare enough. Shortly after his grandmother died, Sarek had startled him by announcing that he'd arranged a meeting with the family of a potential mate. An academic prodigy at a young age, T'Kea had been sent to study on a biological research center near Andoria and had recently returned to Vulcan. Five years older than Sybok, she was fair and blue-eyed, unusual among Vulcans, her hair kept back in a long braid that fell to her waist. If Sybok was disappointed that he wasn't immediately attracted to her, he told no one. Instead, he agreed to meet with her again privately the week after their families were introduced.

His father's house in Shi'Kahr was comfortable, even aesthetically pleasing, but T'Kea's home was opulent, huge, her parents' import business of _kevas_ and _trillium_ making them among the wealthy elite. Sybok found the idea both appealing and off-putting, but again he kept his misgivings to himself.

"My mother knows of your study of sea sponges," Sybok said, settling himself on the stone bench beside T'Kea. "She thought you might like to see some of the varieties from her homeworld."

"Have you been to Terra?" T'Kea said, leafing through the pages of the book.

"Indeed. My mother's sister lives there."

Closing the book, T'Kea looked up.

"Why do you call the Lady Amanda your mother?"

The question was so intemperate, so unexpected, that Sybok blinked in astonishment.

"In every way that matters, she _is_ my mother."

"I see."

T'Kea's voice held no hint of any emotion, yet Sybok had the impression that she was judging Amanda in some way. The idea made him flush.

Holding up the book to him, T'Kea said, "Please thank her for letting me see this."

"It is yours to keep," Sybok said, frowning, but T'Kea said, "Unnecessary. Terran biology holds little interest for me."

Sybok flushed again and took the book.

He stood up then, and T'Kea walked with him past the garden gate to where his flitter was parked on a paved landing pad. When she raised her hand in the _ta'al,_ he forced himself to say the ritualized farewell, sliding behind the seat of his flitter and palming the ignition with so much force that the machine roared to life and shook him sideways.

_Sybok!_

He came to with a start. Something brushed past him with a snarl. Scrambling to his feet, Sybok peered into the darkness and saw the telltale outline of a wild _le-matya_ the size of a Terran puma. _Spock!_ He reached out mentally and felt his brother's terror, knew that he was rolling himself in his blanket to protect himself from the _le-matya's_ teeth and poisoned claws. Grabbing the flare at the foot of his sleeping mat, Sybok ignited it and waved it madly in the air.

The _le-matya_ paused and cowered slightly—as if uncertain what to do, its luminous eyes blinking in the sudden light.

Some primal shout—wordless and meaningful—spilled from Sybok as he advanced on the animal. Reluctantly the _le-matya_ backed away, padding a few feet before leaping down the escarpment.

"Go on!" Sybok yelled again, running forward. With a final snarl, the _le-matya_ loped away into the shadows.

In an instant Sybok was at Spock's side. Holding the flare over him with one hand, he placed his other palm on Spock's chest.

"Let me see you," he said breathlessly. "Are you injured?"

Spock shook his head, but as soon as he moved, he made a gagging noise that raised the hair on the back of Sybok's neck.

"No, no, no, no, _no_ ," he said through clenched teeth. "You can't be."

His panic made it hard to focus. He tugged away the torn blanket and rolled Spock gently from one side to the other, looking for an obvious wound.

And there it was on his forearm, a knick no longer than a few centimeters. Almost no blood, but the skin around it was already puckered and abnormally hot to the touch.

The trip home would be hours by foot. If the wound festered quickly, Spock would lose consciousness long before they could make their way back. Sybok struggled to beat back his despair.

"Come on," he said, slipping his arm under Spock and tugging him upright. Spock yelped and batted at him.

_Do not fight me_ , Sybok told him through his touch. And then out loud he said, "I'll carry you."

Spock yelped again as Sybok tried to pick him up.

"You have to help me. Spock, listen! You have to help! You have to manage the pain so I can carry you. Concentrate! Pay attention! Listen to me!"

In the harsh light of the flare, Sybok saw Spock's eyes roll back, heard his breathing become raspy and labored.

"Listen to me!"

By now Spock was collapsed in a heap on the ground, limp and sweating.

_Spock!_ Sybok called through their bond.

Nothing.

Reaching forward, he pressed his fingers to Spock's brow and cheek. A weak link flickered and flared between them.

_I am dying,_ he heard his brother say feebly.

_You will not die!_ Sybok lowered his shields and let Spock's pain rush over him, diverting it like a stream. _You will not die,_ Sybok said fiercely, this time with as much reassurance as he could muster.

Bracing himself on one knee, he bent down and cradled Spock in his arms. With an effort, he stood upright, teetering unsteadily for a moment. Looking around at the silhouette of the mountains, he took off running toward the city.

"Hold on," he said as Spock grimaced.

The rest of the journey was a blur—skittering down the mountain path, fighting to keep his footing when the rocky path gave way to sand that seemed to tug and pull and weigh down his boots.

_I am dying,_ Spock whispered, and Sybok distracted him with scenes from his own childhood—his room in his grandmother's house, a _sehlat_ he had raised from a pup, a model of the Eridani star system he had designed for school.

But nothing could stop the onslaught of the poison. Spock's thoughts slipped into a jumble of random images—children Sybok recognized from the prep school, a spillway in Seattle where Spock and Amanda's nephew often walked, a research project his teacher had praised.

"Hold on!" Sybok called as Spock's presence grew faint.

Fear shortened Sybok's breathing and he struggled not to stumble as he ran. And ran. His arms ached but he didn't dare try to shift Spock to his shoulder, carrying him instead in his arms like a bundle.

Finally, a light up ahead where a medical hovercraft had touched down. Sybok almost wept in relief.

"I have him!" he shouted.

Amanda's face, pale, stricken. His father reaching out to take Spock in his arms. An elderly healer, gently dusting her fingers over Spock's face and nodding.

"His _katra_ ," the healer said, "is still here. If we can save his body—"

With a mighty rush, the hovercraft took off and Sybok knelt on the cold ground and gulped in lungfuls of air, waiting until he could breathe normally before making the rest of the way home on foot alone.

The house was dark and empty when he arrived and he fell into his bed exhausted, not waking until late the next morning. Reaching inside himself, he searched for Spock. He was there, dimly, like a distant candle, alive and out of real danger. Sybok took a deep breath and went back to sleep.

When Sarek and Amanda brought Spock home from the hospital the next evening, he was abashed at how fragile his brother looked—dark circles under his eyes, his cheeks sunken and pale. Lingering for a few moments in the doorway of Spock's bedroom, he watched his chest rising and falling slowly as he slept.

Through the family bond Sybok could sense Spock's exhaustion, and Amanda's, too, as she prepared for bed.

His father, on the other hand, was furious.

At Sybok, certainly, but at something else, too. With a sigh, Sybok made his way to his father's study and opened the door.

As he expected, Sarek was sitting at his desk, his fingers laced together in front of him.

"I know you are angry with me—" Sybok began, but Sarek waved his hand to interrupt him.

"The healers say Spock would have died if not for his human spleen filtering out some of the poison. A few more minutes and even that would not have saved him."

A wave of guilt—his father's as well as his own—kept Sybok silent. In retrospect the trip was ill-advised. Late autumn was the _le-matya_ migration, not to mention the probability of storms that could flood the mountain ravines.

But Sybok had ignored any uneasiness he had felt. Getting Spock alone to talk had seemed more important, worth any risk. He was sure that if he could get his little brother to open up about the abuse at school, he could somehow solve it for him—could give him the means, the strategies, to win the bullies over to his side, or failing that, could teach him some counter moves that would throw them off their stride and earn him a respite for awhile.

"You think only of your own pleasure," Sarek said. "Did you even consider what you were doing to Spock by forcing him to accompany you?"

Sybok's temper flared. "He is unharmed."

"Unharmed! When we found you, he was close to death."

"But his _katra_ was safe—"

"You should have exercised more care," Sarek said. "Your impetuousness almost cost Spock his life. It is one thing for you to destroy your own chances with your illogical behavior and quite another to put Spock in danger."

"I would never knowingly harm Spock—"

"Precisely," Sarek said. "You choose _not_ to know a great deal—in your pursuit of your own emotional gratification. Your choice to _feel_ instead of _know_ what you should do is inexcusable."

The thinly veiled reference to the _V'tosh ka'tur_ brought the blood rushing to Sybok's face. And just like that, Sybok saw his future stretching out before him. Without his father's support, what was the point of going for the second interview at the VSA? His heart gave a lurch.

He backed out of the study, the pain in his side growing so intense that he pressed his fingers against his ribs. His head swam; his stomach soured and he thought he might throw up.

To leave—not just this familiar house but his family as well. Instead of protecting Spock, he had put him in danger. Instead of winning his father's respect, he'd garnered his scorn. He didn't even know who he was anymore.

His thoughts roiled through his bond and he knew that he had to tamp them down or he would wake both Amanda and Spock. With an effort, he pulled his awareness back into himself. There was his father's anger, too, like a shadow looming in the corner of a chilly room. Sybok closed himself off from it.

The immediate loneliness was hard to bear.

But it was also a relief. He took a deep breath and went to his room to pack a travel bag. By the time the sun rose in the morning, he would be at the transport station, looking for a place to go.

X X X

"Attend."

"Father?"

Sybok had stayed out of Sarek's mind for so long that at first he had trouble finding him. If he opened his eyes he knew he would see his father standing before him, T'Pol and Spock's bondmate seated on the carved wooden bench nearby. He could feel Tri'eska's and Davara's worry and knew that they were also still in the receiving room in T'Pol's home, watching the meld.

His father's mind was far more disciplined than his own, with fewer edges of color and noise. Or rather, the color and noise were orderly and categorized, put away like files in a PADD.

Without needing to be told, Sybok knew that the images looming up now were his father's memories of the disastrous camping trip.

Like watching a jerky holovid, he saw himself and Spock from his father's point of view, shifting their backpacks to their shoulders and leaving the house at first light, their silhouettes receding until they disappeared on the horizon.

"Did you call yet?" Amanda said, walking out onto the wide stone porch where Sarek sat, his mug of tea balanced in his palm.

"I have not," he said, and Amanda frowned and put one hand on her hip, the way she did when she wanted to emphasize her annoyance.

"If you won't," she said, her voice rising in pitch, "then I will."

"Sybok should be the one to call them," Sarek said, looking down into his tea. "If he really wants to reapply—"

Amanda blew out a breath of air and threw her hands in the air.

"Of _course_ he should be the one to call," she said, "but he's like his father—stubborn. He's embarrassed at being turned down, and probably angry. And he's a kid, Sarek, and kids don't always make good decisions. This is one of those times when you have to step in and help him think clearly. Go ahead and set up another interview for him. By the time they get back from the mountains, he'll be over some of his disappointment and he'll listen then."

Taking a slow sip of his tea, Sarek said, "It may take more than a simple call."

Amanda crossed her arms.

"Then perhaps you need to get busy."

The scene shifted to an unfamiliar high-ceilinged room. Three Vulcans in traditional instructor's robes were seated behind an ornate clear table. Sarek stood ten paces away, his left wrist held tightly in his right hand to keep from shaking.

"As you see," Sarek was saying, "Sybok's aptitude in mathematics is unparalleled. His teachers report superior achievement in his other courses of study as well. I do not understand why you have withheld his unqualified acceptance to this institution. Explain."

His voice held just a hint of challenge, and the chief Vulcan interviewer narrowed his eyes as if annoyed.

"Your son," the interviewer said, "submitted a school record which includes many questionable choices. Rather than adding an advanced astrophysics class to his resume, he pursued a curriculum that included off-world speculative fiction. A waste of his time and energy, surely."

Sarek pressed the fingers of his right hand more firmly around his left wrist.

"I gave Sybok private instruction in advanced astrophysics," he said, his words clipped and low. "His studies with me were more extensive than what the school could provide. And my wife is an off-worlder. His interest in her culture is logical."

"Still," the interviewer continued, "despite his academic accolades, his teachers expressed some concern about his emotional control. On more than one occasion the headmaster has cautioned him about a propensity for violence."

At this Sarek flushed.

"The incidents to which you refer," he said, looking from the chief interviewer to the other members of the committee, "were necessary defensive actions he took to protect his younger brother against other students."

"You are accusing other students of violence?"

"If you read Sybok's records carefully, you would know this already."

His tone was almost scornful. Certainly it communicated his anger.

"We are aware of the charges made at the time," the interviewer said. "Their accuracy has not been verified."

"Nor _disputed_ ," Sarek said so swiftly that one of the Vulcan interviewers—an elderly woman with short white hair—made an audible harrumph.

"There is one other matter," the interviewer said. "His connection to illegal and dangerous radicals-"

Sarek interrupted him impatiently. "The _V'tosh ka'tur_ may be dissidents, but they are doing nothing illegal. My son's exploration of their philosophy may be disturbing to traditionalists, but it harms no one. Indeed, I would argue that Sybok's interest is an admirable reflection of his greater commitment to IDIC. Surely the admissions committee of an institution of higher education shares that same commitment to diversity."

The chief interviewer shifted from one foot to the other, a rare sign of Vulcan uneasiness. Sarek's hope swelled—and as he watched the memory of that moment in his father's mind, Sybok knew what would happen next.

That Sarek would schedule another interview for his son—forcing them to at least pretend to uphold the traditional Vulcan value of inclusion.

And that he planned to lecture Sybok later at home about toeing the line—speaking with a force born out of fear for Sybok's future, insisting that he abandon whatever budding interest he had in the _V'tosh ka'tur._

If Sybok could reappear before the committee chastened and humble, he might have a chance, not just to study at the prestigious university, but at a future that was exceptionally promising.

Except that the camping trip had put an end to all that. Sybok was two star systems away earning passage on a freighter by the time the scheduled second interview came around.

_I never knew,_ Sybok thought, his heart hammering so hard that his ears were ringing. _Why didn't you tell me?_

But the question was a rhetorical one. He already knew the answer. When he left Vulcan he didn't just leave most of his material possessions behind. He severed his connections to his family, closing off that part of his mind like someone nailing shut a door, their voices becoming fainter and fainter, until at last he couldn't hear them at all.

Until, of course, the Moment when Amanda called out to him 18 months ago—her fear and sorrow and regret and anguish breaking through the barriers he had built with such care.

**A/N: Spock's recollection of the camping trip is in Chapter 10 of "What We Think We Know."  
**

**This story is almost over—one more chapter, I think. Whether you enjoy it or not, I appreciate hearing from you. This chapter changes up the pattern a little bit...instead of Sarek having the middle section, Sybok is sharing his memories with his father in that part, and then Sarek shows Sybok his own recollections in the end. I hope that isn't confusing!  
**

**If you are a fan of the original Star Trek crew, over in TOS I've started a new fic, "Changelings," based on the episode "The Changeling" where Uhura gets her memories wiped. Take a look!**


	13. O Brother Where Art Thou?

**Chapter 13: O Brother Where Art Thou?**

**Disclaimer: No money made here.**

Under the bright midday sun, the sands of Vulcan are more pink than red, the beige sky arching overhead. In the open flatlands of the desert, the heat is oppressive. What little shrubbery grows here is scraggly and thick-leaved against the constant loss of water. Any animals or insects are burrowed in the sand, waiting until twilight before coming out to hunt.

Or at least that's how it appears as Spock walks slowly along the winding paths of the _Enterprise's_ botanical gardens.

As he often does when he visits the gardens on deck six, Spock appreciates the technical achievement of recreating such a detailed image of Vulcan as much as he finds contentment in the illusion itself. His own computing skills had been integral to writing the program that controls the lighting and the holoprojections along the walls, but Spock is also aware that many of the native plants are thriving because of attention from the helmsman, Hikaru Sulu, who has a keen interest in botany.

More than once Spock has entered the botanical gardens before or after a shift and found the Vulcan program running, obviously activated by other crewmates. He finds the idea oddly comforting that people who probably never visited Vulcan before its destruction choose to do so now—in a manner of speaking.

Stepping off the meandering pathway, Spock feels the slight give and hears the faint scrunch of sand under his boots. The sound gives him away instantly. Standing under the leafy overhang of an _indukah_ tree, Sybok turns and watches him approach.

"The Council has finished their deliberations," Spock says without preamble. "Father contacted me and asked me to let you know that they decided in your favor. You and the other settlers are free to go. If you need help arranging for housing on the colony, the Council is setting up a liaison to assist you."

He starts to head back to the path when Sybok calls from behind him.

"How did you know I was here? I told no one."

Spock stops and looks down at the sand at his feet. On the surface, Sybok's question is straightforward, simple. But Spock hears what he is really asking.

_Can you sense me in your mind?_

And what that implies: _Are we family again?_

"I inferred you would be here," Spock says without turning around.

"Your bondmate suggested that I visit the gardens before I leave the ship."

"Indeed."

"She was helpful this morning," Sybok says, taking a step towards Spock, "when I saw her at T'Pol's home."

A wave of emotion washes over Spock and he swivels around to face his brother.

"What is it that you want, Sybok?"

His brother's face registers surprise before settling into a frown. Then Sybok shrugs and says, "I do not blame you for being angry. If I can help—"

"I am not angry," Spock says, not sure what he _is_ feeling. "And I am wary of any help you might offer."

Raising one eyebrow, Sybok says, "You _are_ angry, even if you do not admit it. I would be angry, too, if someone interfered with my bond with Tri'eska."

"Any emotions I may or may not feel are none of your concern."

"You don't get to decide what my concerns are," Sybok says. _Sarcasm? Humor?_ At one time Spock would have been able read his tone clearly. Now Sybok is a cypher to him.

"At any rate," Sybok continues, "I may be the only person who _can_ help you. Your trouble with your bond began when I—"

His words drift off and Spock has an image of the forced mind meld—Sybok's fingers reaching for his face, his fury and despair about Vulcan, about Amanda's death, knocking Spock's mental shields aside like a cobweb.

Taking a breath, Sybok says, "I believe I know why there is _silence_ now in your mind."

"You did this." Spock's anger spikes again.

"Not intentionally. I was…shocked…when I saw…what you saw."

His gaze is piercing, almost intrusive, and Spock struggles not to look away.

"I think," Sybok says, taking another step closer, "that I wanted to close down the pain. That I closed down your ability to feel…connected. The same way I shut myself off from you in the past. If that is true—"

At once Spock knows what Sybok is proposing. Another mind meld, to take back the barrier Sybok left behind.

_It's possible_ , Spock thinks. Sybok was always an exceptionally strong telepath with a formidable will. Tilting his head, he says, "Where—"

But before he can say another word, Sybok crosses the distance remaining between them, his elbows bent, his palms out like someone offering a gift.

"May I?"

For a moment Spock hesitates. At one time he would have trusted Sybok with his life—did, in fact, believe him capable of almost anything. A child's notion—but then so is the other extreme, his more recent belief that Sybok can do nothing good.

Taking a breath, he says, "Proceed."

X X

He was always running, even in the shimmering rainbows of midday heat, even though his grandmother's face screwed up in undisguised disapproval when he tumbled through the door or pelted across the room.

"Deportment," she would sniff, and he would skitter to a stop, sheepish, trying to strike a conciliatory pose.

"Sybok certainly has a great deal of _enthusiasm_ ," he overheard one of his grandmother's elderly acquaintances say one day.

"The word you mean," his grandmother said, "is _energy_."

_Her_ meaning was unmistakable— _enthusiasm_ was an emotion, and therefore unacceptable.

His grandmother's house was built in a typical Vulcan style, low to the ground with curved walls and deep overhangs on the windows to rebuff the wind and sunlight. The yard was too rocky to grow much, though his grandmother had set out some large clay pots of succulents near the main entrance.

The inside of the house was equally sterile, though as a child Sybok had not been able to articulate why he found it so unwelcoming. The wooden floors and cool stucco walls were bare and unadorned, the furniture simple, clean-lined, practical. The kitchen—the area of the house where many Vulcan families spent the majority of their time—was too small for a full size table. Instead, Sybok and his grandmother shared their silent meals on the outdoor patio, balancing their bowls in their laps.

Each evening when they finished their soup, Sybok waited impatiently for his grandmother to rise and take their dishes to the kitchen sink, his signal that he was free until bedtime. Usually he sprang up as soon as his grandmother was out of sight, dashing down the stone steps to the back yard, leaping from rock to rock like a mountain _sha'amii,_ running from one side of the yard to the other until his throat was hoarse from breathing in the dry desert air.

Only then did he stop, the wild pounding in his side reassuring him that he would be able to beat back the demons that kept him awake otherwise.

"What are you running from?" his grandmother asked him once, and he was startled to realize that he didn't know.

On the days when he couldn't run—when his grandmother insisted he accompany her on her infrequent shopping trips in the village, for instance, or when she entertained company and parked him at her side on the wooden settee while she served tea—he slept badly, his dreams full of longing and sorrow that were somehow tied up to his few memories of his mother. More than once his grandmother had shaken him awake, scolding him for crying out in his sleep.

"Vulcans do not dream," she pronounced the first time he started to tell her about what troubled him. After that, he kept his thoughts to himself.

For the first six years of his life he saw his father rarely, and then only in the presence of his grandmother. Although neither one said anything to him directly, their animosity for each other was evident—not just through the undercurrent of his family bond, but in the way they hardly looked at each other when they spoke, in the way they canted their bodies away from each other.

By the time he noticed it, he was old enough to know not to ask about it.

And then everything changed.

He heard about Amanda long before he met her.

_Your father's human,_ his grandmother said dismissively, as if Sarek had acquired a pet.

He wasn't sure what this meant, exactly—at least not for him. Would his father spend even less time with him now that he had someone else in his life?

_And a human. What exactly was that?_ Something shocking and disagreeable, from his grandmother's reaction.

Over the years Sybok had spent even less time with his paternal grandparents than he had with his father, so he was surprised when his grandmother arranged a visit. Sarek's father, she said, was seriously ill with Bendii's Syndrome, and tradition demanded that he see his grandchildren before he died. She herself didn't go. Instead, she sent Sybok with a family attendant, a thin young man who seemed to show up for his grandmother's unusual jobs and tasks.

Later Sybok would recall the wonder of seeing the S'chn T'gai estate from the flitter window—the ancient house sprawling across the landscape like a series of cobbled together boxes; a grove of _indukah_ trees clustered between a flat plain and hills as short and stacked as steps.

The circular arena for _koon-ut-kalifee_ in the distance, the tall stone columns casting deep shadows in the late afternoon—Sybok marked them as a destination when he could get outside and run.

But mostly he would remember how his excitement soured into fear as soon as he entered the house and heard his grandfather wailing behind a closed door.

"Wait here," the stooped Vulcan woman who had answered the door said, and he and the thin attendant stepped into the entranceway.

_Another loud wail._ Sybok lifted his hands to cover his ears but one look from the attendant made him lower them again.

A thud, a shutting door, footsteps—and suddenly the attendant was back.

"I will show you to your room," she said brusquely. "Skon is unable to see you at this time."

That night Sybok slept badly—not because he heard his grandfather cry out again, but because he could not stop hearing him in his memory.

The next morning another woman came to his door—short, white-haired, tired. Sybok knew instinctively that this was his father's mother.

"Lady T'Aara," the attendant said, and she nodded.

"After you have eaten your morning meal," she said, "bring him to the reception area. Sybok's father is here."

_His father!_ Sybok's heart leapt at the idea that his father was down the hall—and quite possibly his human was there as well!

He hurried through his breakfast—slices of fruit and flatbread—and sat swinging his legs until the attendant finished his tea, stood up, and started for the reception room.

Sure enough, his father was standing as he usually did, his arms behind his back, his face unreadable.

But Sybok couldn't keep his eyes off the other person there. What a disappointment! In his imagination a human was a creature far more exotic than this ordinary woman sitting with a cup of tea on the table beside her. Except for a peculiar curve to her ears and eyebrows, she was no different from any other Vulcan woman. What had his grandmother been thinking?

"Speak to your father, Sybok," Sarek's mother said to him, and he pulled his attention away and gave short, cursory answers.

Yes, he liked school. No, he didn't have a pet anymore. No, he didn't have any other particular interests.

A replay of many of the conversations he and his father had shared over the years.

Soon enough, they fell silent.

"This is Amanda," his father said, motioning to the human.

And suddenly she morphed into the exotic creature he had imagined and hoped for. Her face underwent a transformation—her eyes crinkled, her teeth flashed, and she seemed lit by some inner light. Sybok heard her heartbeat thrumming loudly in her throat, saw her cheeks flush pink.

He took a breath in surprise and smelled citrus and herbs in her clothes, her hair.

"Come here," she said, and he was pulled forward like metal to a magnet.

They didn't speak long. In fact, she did most of the talking. But by the time they parted, she had spoken to him not just with words but in louder ways, too—letting him know with her glances, with her gestures, with her tone of voice, with the little flutter he saw in her hands as if she longed to touch him that she loved him.

Not that he would have used that word then, and not even for many years afterwards, but it wasn't necessary to speak aloud what he instinctively knew.

That night his sleep was deep and dreamless.

" _I fail to see how this memory helps me regain my bond with Nyota."_

_Spock's voice, as clear as if he is speaking aloud._

" _Patience," Sybok says in the meld, and though he senses that Spock is annoyed, his brother says nothing else._

He shows him another memory, this one three years later.

By now when he traveled, Sybok traveled alone, his grandmother deeming the family attendant unnecessary. During this remembered visit, the transport station in Shi'Kahr was almost deserted, with only a few people sitting or walking along the concourse. Even without scanning the crowd, Sybok knew that his father and Amanda weren't there yet. Through their bond he could sense their agitation—at being late to pick him up, but something else, too, some underpinning of excitement or happiness.

_His father, happy?_

There it was, unmistakable. Sybok's heart began to race.

_We just found out—a baby! Amanda called out silently. Sybok, it's wonderful! You'll have a brother at last!_

"Excuse me," Sybok said, sitting hard on a bench beside a startled older man.

The baby wasn't a surprise. In the past three years, Amanda had suffered two miscarriages, and the last time he had been home for a visit, his father had told him that he needed to be especially attentive to her because she was slow to recover from her grief.

A task he had taken on with great seriousness—and joy. Why not admit it now, how much pleasure it had given him to make her smile?

A flower delivered from the garden, an offer to help her make supper, climbing into the chair with her as she read—Amanda seemed to relish the things he did for her.

Vaguely in the past he had registered snippets of conversations he heard between his father and Amanda—talk of medical help, discussions about Vulcan and human phenotypes, an almost whimsical debate about whether to give him a brother or sister…

Theoretical words. Until they weren't.

What _was_ a surprise was how much emotion the news now evoked, not just in his father, in Amanda, but in himself.

He was instantly, intensely angry.

A brother! A boy to replace him. A son who would live with them every day of the year, not forced to spend part of the year apart. His father's son by marriage. Amanda's son by blood.

"Do you require assistance?" the man on the bench asked, not unkindly.

Sybok shook his head and blinked his eyes.

He was still sitting there when Sarek found him.

"Why have you remained inside when you knew we were looking for you?"

Saying nothing, Sybok tamped down the connection between them, shamed by his jealousy and his inability to control it.

If Amanda sensed his dismay, she hid it well, hugging him as she always did and helping him into the flitter. On the ride back to the house she asked him a series of questions that he dodged with monosyllables, the way he had answered his father that day long ago when he first met Amanda.

"I'm going for a run," Sybok said as soon as he had deposited his travel bag in his room. He saw Amanda dart a glance at his father, but neither said anything as he headed outside to the open desert.

The sun was low on the horizon but the heat had not yet started to drop. For the first kilometer, Sybok ran straight into the light, squinting and keeping his eyes cast low. When the sun touched the top of landscape, he turned north and watched the distant hills growing closer.

On and on he ran, until his breath was raspy, until his legs ached and his feet were as heavy as wooden blocks. He pumped his arms and ran on, trying to drive out the image of Amanda holding a baby in her arms, himself standing idly by.

The image embarrassed him, made him feel small and petty. He ran on and tried to do as his father often counseled him—to purge himself of his feelings, or if he had to feel anything, to feel calm and contented.

It was useless. A baby's face—tiny, wizened, Vulcan—swam up and made his side hurt.

Suddenly he stumbled and had to throw himself forward to regain his balance. _Concentrate. A fall this far from home might mean a broken bone, a serious cut._

By now the sun had disappeared and the sky was various shades of reds and purples. Soon it would be velvet black—the stars offering only weak light for his run home. With a sigh, Sybok turned back.

A distant yowl of a wild _sehlat_ starting its evening hunt made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Fear shortened his breath and he picked up his pace.

Again he stumbled, this time breaking his fall by landing on one knee. A sharp pain sluiced from his knee to his ankle—a rock, most likely, causing a bruise. He stood up and tested his weight. _Steady._ Another high-pitched yowl, this time closer. Sybok took a tentative step, then two, and started running again, slower, limping.

Somewhere to his right, he heard a cascade of pebbles. _A sehlat sliding down the face of a boulder?_

A full-grown _sehlat_ could weigh 550 kilos and had six inch fangs. The undomesticated ones were a very real threat for unarmed travelers in the desert, particularly at night or during the breeding season.

What had he been thinking, heading out for a run this way?

Peering ahead, Sybok scanned for the outdoor lights of the house.

Nothing.

Another noise, this time at his feet. Leaping to the side, he caught a faint glimpse of a _k'karee_ as it slithered into the undergrowth.

_Mother!_

And then he saw it, a pinpoint of light straight ahead, bobbing and weaving.

He took off running as fast as he could, the light pulling him onward like a beacon.

"Mother!" he called out loud, and the light flickered and saluted him and split into two. As he drew closer, he saw that both Amanda and his father were walking a few paces apart, each carrying an electric torch.

"What were you doing?" his father said sharply, but before he could answer, Amanda took him in her arms and said, "Are you alright? Let me look at you!"

Even in the dim light he could see the worry in her expression—her eyes damp, her brow creased. And just like that his anger was gone—replaced by his very real remorse at causing her pain.

"I thought I had lost you!" she said as she shepherded him across the dark yard to the rectangle of light that was the open door. "Don't ever leave like that again without telling me what you are doing! Promise me!"

He had, of course, promised.

Theoretical words. Until they weren't.

He undid that promise when he left for good—after he argued with Sarek about being turned down at the Vulcan Science Academy, after the barely spoken accusations about the _V'tosh ka'tur_.

"Promise me!" Amanda sometimes told him in his dreams, as troubled as the ones he had had as a small boy.

And a final memory—Spock's this time—of standing at the precipice of the katric arc, Amanda's eyes averted from the cataclysm behind her.

_I do not wish to see this,_ Spock says, but his protest fades as they both realize that they have to see it again, together.

In slow motion the planet begins its inevitable implosion. The noise of crashing rock walls and rushing air—the thunderous sound of a world in upheaval—Spock's shout of "Mother!"—and there, over everything else, are Amanda's last thoughts, words and images—like a whirlwind.

Sybok cradling newborn Spock in his arms, his fervent declaration that "This is _my_ baby!" making Amanda laugh out loud; a dozen heartsick goodbyes when she slipped a kiss on the top of his head and sent him back to his grandmother after a visit; an afternoon spent stripping _plomeek_ shoots at the kitchen sink, Sybok retelling her a human fairy tale he had read in the book she had given him—these rose up invisibly in the air like leaves in a storm as Amanda felt her balance shift, felt herself begin to fall.

_Sybok!_ she called out before she disappeared, and on a distant planet Sybok dropped like a stone, felled by the promise he had broken.

_I cannot bear it!_

The folly of emotion crashed over him and he gasped at that hard won knowledge—how much better to close this off, to _not_ feel, to _not_ see…

Gradually he becomes aware that his fingers are on Spock's face—both earlier during the forced meld and now, here, standing in the botanical gardens, peeling back the layers of guilt and denial until the only emotion left is raw and pulsing and unnamed.

Spock's feelings and his own intertwine like tangled thread.

_I left her,_ someone thinks. _I let her go,_ is the reply.

And suddenly the pain is easier to endure, shared this way, lessened and softened and lightened. A fraction, but a relief, nonetheless.

_I'm leaving now,_ Sybok says, and for a moment Spock feels the same loss he felt as a small child when one of Sybok's longer visits came to an end and he packed his bags to return to his grandmother's house.

_I'm leaving,_ Sybok says, _but the door is open._

Vulcan idioms are rare, and metaphors are rarer, but a telepathic bond is often compared to a door that is open to family. Even as Sybok starts to slip out of Spock's mind through the door that connects him, he feels another presence growing bright and strong—Spock's bondmate, filling Spock's mind like a spotlight, like a warm campfire.

When he opens his eyes, Sybok lowers his hand and takes a step back. He lifts one eyebrow in a question and Spock tilts his head as if listening to some internal music.

"Thank you," he says simply, and then turning, walks to the entrance of the botanical gardens and leaves, without looking back.

X X X

They do not talk. When Spock returns to his quarters Nyota is there as he knew she would be. She opens her mouth to speak but he touches her lips with the tip of his finger, silencing her.

_No words. None._

He wants nothing to separate them. No sounds, no syllables. Nothing that can be misconstrued or misunderstood. Nothing that can get in the way of understanding.

He pulls her to him and she sways like a reed, like the dancer she was as a teenager. Releasing her, he pilots her to the bed with the touch of his hand.

When he lies down and reaches for her, she slides into his arms like someone coming home.

"I've missed you," she blurts out, and then to stop herself from saying more, she kisses him, softly at first and then with more urgency as he responds.

They speak to each other through the language of touch—lips and fingers, a hand sliding and holding and lifting up tender flesh for inspection and attention. Soon the room is too hot for clothes. Nyota kicks the covers to the floor, unwilling to let anything come between their skin.

No words, but much conversation—tentative at first and then intense and close—their bodies whispering soundless endearments and strokes of encouragement and desire until they've finished their story and lie back panting softly.

Soon he feels her falling asleep, stretched out on the bed, her head tucked under his chin. He folds one arm over her and drapes his ankle over hers, as if to reassure himself that she won't walk away.

Hours later they dress and walk to the mess hall, and only then—once they have stepped through the door into a room buzzing with talk—do they use words to communicate to each other.

Seating himself across the long table from her, Spock says, "He is not staying on the colony."

She understands him at once and he feels her flash of sorrow.

"But the Council said—"

"Some of the _V'tosh ka'tur_ have taken up their offer. Most, perhaps, will ultimately decide to settle here. But the Rihannsu are returning to their homeworld. Sybok is going with them."

Even before he had left the botanical gardens, Spock had known what Sybok would decide.

"Are you sure?" Nyota asks, cupping her hands around her coffee mug. "It isn't too late for him to change his mind."

Letting his gaze settle in the middle distance, Spock searches inward.

"He will never be at home here," he says after a moment. "And he does not wish to be parted from his family."

"But you're his family. And Sarek."

"And we are not parted from him, now."

"But these Rihannsu are outcasts on their homeworld. How can they—"

And then he sees comprehension dawning in her expression.

"They are joining those who are fighting for Reunification," she says, her eyes wide.

"Selek," Spock adds, "will lead them there."

Another wave of sorrow—though he isn't certain if it is hers or his.

"That's dangerous!"

"Indeed."

"Can't you talk to him?"

"To Sybok? His mind is set."

"Then what about talking to Selek? Tell him this is a bad idea. Try to talk some sense into him."

Spock raises one eyebrow and says, "I have it on good authority that he is unusually stubborn and resistant to suggestion."

He tries to say this with humor, but Nyota sighs, and with a motion almost too quick to see, he brushes his fingers over hers, still curled around her mug.

"We will be in touch with them," he says quietly. "No matter where they go, you and I will know where they are."

"And that's enough?"

_Is it?_ For years he didn't know if Sybok was alive, or if he was, where he was and why he stayed away. The little candle Sybok lit in the corner of Spock's mind is still there, and will be tomorrow and the next day, and the one after that—day after day stretching into the future, like a light shining through an open door.

"It is everything," he says, and it is.

**A/N: Whew! My goal in writing this story was two-fold...to explore what makes Sybok tick, and to visit some of Sarek and Amanda's backstory. Did it work more times than not? Let me know what you think.**

**Sybok's first meeting with Amanda is also described in chapter nine of "My Mother, the Ambassador" from Amanda's point of view.  
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**As always, I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read. Everyone is busy, and with so much entertainment available, I'm honored that you chose to spend time with this little story.**

**For those of you who left reviews, you are the engine that keeps fanfiction running. Without your support, writers wouldn't bother to put their work here for others to enjoy.**

**If you are looking for a new TOS story to follow, may I humbly suggest that you check out my story "Changelings." After the damaged space probe Nomad wipes Nyota's memories, Spock figures out a way to help restore them—but his plan changes how the crew sees each other. The first two chapters are up!**


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